May 5, 2021

(CES) - The recently-completed CES Virtual Student Authors' Library contains some of the written works completed by CES virtual students. The library allows students to share their stories, read others' stories, and offer feedback to peers. There is also a read aloud feature which allows readers to have the stories read to them.

The majority of our CES Virtual Student Authors’ Library comes from our Fantasy Fiction Writing Project. It was done with virtual 4th and 5th grades at CES as the writing component of our Fantasy Fiction Unit. The project required students to investigate the different subgenera of fantasy fiction and analyze the defining elements of fantasy fiction. They added this knowledge to what they learned about character archetypes, fiction plot lines, conflict types, point of view, author’s message, universal themes, imagery, and symbolism to compose their own fantasy fiction short story. The writing project also required the students to apply newly learned grammar skills, such as writing dialogue with quotation marks.

Virtual 3rd graders wrote the nonfiction books in our library as the writing component of our nonfiction unit. In this unit, students learned how to research a topic and organize information from their research. They combined this with their knowledge of nonfiction text features and text structures to write nonfiction books on an animal of their choice.