ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on specific assignments the author has his students complete. These assignments-including the author adaptation of Kelly Gallagher's article of the week, book reviews, and myths-give them insight into the world of informational reading and writing. The chapter describes the myths that the author's students write and how we approach this task from an informational perspective. Informational writing will continue to be at the forefront of our teaching in the language arts classroom. The CCSS pushes for nonfiction reading and writing, and when we look at how we are going to make the effort to incorporate this into our classroom, collaboration with our own colleagues is crucial to the success of our students. The students in the middle school work on summarization of the articles they find and nothing more, but at least they are practicing writing skills in an arena other than the language arts classroom.
