INTRODUCTION

Life and culture in North America during the colonial period emphasized self-sufficiency and community. Colonists lived in ways that were incredibly different from our lives today. How can we engage students in using historical knowledge of this period to include real-world detail and narrative exposition in their writing? How can we help them introduce research and structural outlines into their creative writing processes?

PROJECT OVERVIEW

In this project, students research the colonial period, invent fictional colonists, and write short biographies of them. Then, after learning about historical fiction in The Writing Trek, they write first person, day-in-the-life fictional narratives of the imagined colonists, assemble their histories of colonial life as Web pages, and link these to headstones in a "virtual cemetery."

Phase 1: Uncovering the known and the unknown

While other groups begin their research, work with one small group at a time at the computer, discussing what students already know about colonial life and what areas remain a mystery. One student in each group can enter questions, keywords, and other information into the Colonial Life Research Guide Table, allowing you to track all the interesting unknowns that emerge from your discussions. After the discussions are complete, present the list of unknowns to the class.

Ask groups you are not working with to collect resources and information detailing colonial living and the lives of key figures in the period. Groups review ready-made TimeLiner timelines, use library resources, and search World Book Encyclopedia and the Internet (using EdView). They use AppleWorks to record research notes and track the locations of resources. Once the list of unknowns and keywords is presented to the class, groups can use this information to focus their research.

Phase 2: Assembling fictional lives

Each group meets to review its research results. The group then brainstorms a list of fictional people who lived during the Colonial era (a Quaker seamstress in Philadelphia, a Virginia tobacco farmer) and whose lives can be supported by the group's knowledge base.

Working now independently, students choose a character from the group's list and use TimeLiner to create a biographical timeline outlining the character's life. Then, working from the timeline, each student writes (in AppleWorks) a short biography of the character.

Phase 3: Detailing a single day

Returning to their groups, students investigate the "A Day in the Life" project in the Research Hall of The Writing Trek, which introduces students to historical fiction, a form of writing that involves fictional characters and situations in real and otherwise accurate settings.

Using skills learned in the "A Day in the Life" project, students (again working individually) write first person narratives of one day in the lives of their fictional characters (using AppleWorks) based on their biographies and biographical timelines.

After completing drafts of their narratives, students use the AppleWorks drawing or painting tools to create headstone images for their characters, which will be used on the Web pages created in Phase 4.

Phase 4: Building the virtual cemetery

Students meet in peer edit groups. They revise their fictional narratives based on feedback and their own impressions.

The students in each group now cooperate in creating a Web page for each student, made up of that student's headstone image, the text of the short biography, an exported graphic image of the biographical timeline, and the day-in-the-life narrative.

Working with a small group of volunteers, collect all the individual Web pages and headstone image files into a single folder, create a main page for the virtual cemetery by placing each student's headstone image on the page, and then link each headstone to its corresponding Web page. Finally, publish the virtual cemetery on the Internet.