Children are experts at pretending and the new first grade writing unit revolves around realistic fiction which allows for a lot of creativity!   This unit continues with the underlying theme of the fall unit, Small Moments, which states that  writiers write best about what they know.  The difference between writing a personal narrative and our current unit is that realistic fiction gives children the opportunity to develop a character, setting, details, and problem/solution.  Our writers are encouraged to pretend, to plan, and to call on their own experiences to imagine details that might make their stories more interesting and exciting for the reader.  Throughout the unit, the students will be honing their understanding of the mechanics of print, including capitalization of names, end punctuation, and conventional spelling of common spelling patterns.  One of the main goals of this unit is for each child to write a series of books that include the same character.  In the classroom, the teachers are pointing out similarities between books in a series.  Each child is asked to bring in an empty cereal box that will hold the "Boxed Set" of their finished series.