• In a middle school expedition on World War II, students interviewed veterans and wrote their memoirs. As preparation, they studied the memoir genre by reading memoirs in their literature circles. During reading comprehension workshops, the teacher taught strategies for questioning and determining importance to help students understand the memoirs better and develop their own writing. In writing workshops, the students examined exemplary models of memoirs and considered how the authors crafted them. The students revised their memoirs through multiple drafts until they were of presentation quality. The final products were given to the interviewed veterans as both a thank you and an act of service.
• In a primary expedition on butterflies, students produced an illustrated field guide to local butterflies for their local chamber of commerce. The teacher used think-alouds during reading comprehension workshops to teach how to build background knowledge, activate schema, and make connections to prepare each child for writing a page for the field guide. Since the students were reading more difficult texts than they usually encountered, the teacher taught decoding skills such as segmenting, how to use context clues, and specific features of nonfiction text. Having a real audience meant that the students were invested in revising their work to ensure that words were spelled correctly, that sentences were fluent, and that their own voices were heard.
