English and History Departments Unite!

The English and History departments are teaming up! Mrs. Kroon’s English I classes and Mr. Raveling’s World History classes are collaborating on a cause and effect research essay on the fall of the Roman Empire.  Mrs. Kroon is focusing on the 6 + 1 Traits of Writing (Ideas, Organization, Voice, Sentence Fluency, Word Choice, Conventions) and the writing process.  Mr. Raveling is focusing on the research/sources, content, and formatting of the essay. 

Students are researching three related causes for the fall of the Roman Empire.  They are researching strong, credible sources and incorporating them into their essays.  Final drafts will not be submitted for several weeks as the students go through the entire writing process including: Prewriting, Writing the first draft, Evaluating, Revising, Editing, and Publishing.  Through the process, they are realizing the amount of time and effort that goes into producing a strong piece of writing.

Mrs. Kroon and Mr. Raveling are enjoying the collaboration and are seeing wonderful progress on the essays.  The students seem to be simultaneously learning a great deal about history and writing. 

We hope this is the first of many future collaboration projects!