I teach fifth grade and recently we completed our unit on informational texts. This is a MASIA unit that our district has adopted as part of our full writing curriculum. This year I decided to incorporate a technology piece. The final project was for the students to build an informational book on an American Colonist they were studying in Social Studies. Students spent many days researching their colonist. Students also studied many different types of informational texts to use as models for their own works. Students wrote three different chapters on their colonist as well as an introduction, table of contents, glossary, and title page. Students also were asked to write an "About the Author" page. Students used pre-made templates built on Microsoft Word. Students worked on developing their typings skills as well as finding pictures, writing captions, and developing references to works used to build their works.

Students worked hard writing their informational text. They went through the their writing process of peer revising, editing, and meeting with the teacher before moving on to publishing. After using the template students proceeded to find visuals such as pictures and maps to use with their information.

Once the project was complete I surveyed the students about the lesson. More enjoyed the publishing of their works and finding the different visuals as well as changing the fonts. Some students felt that the templates were easy to use, but others would have liked to develop their pages on their own. Something to think about for next year.