After several weeks of writing, editing and revising, eighth graders at Edmund W. Miles Middle School celebrated the completion of their first major writing assignment of the year.

Teacher Dawn Attanasio said the celebration was the culmination of much hard work by students in the memoir writing unit. Each student had to pick a meaningful moment in his or her life to write about. Many chose a memory from a place they visited, while others shared an experience with a family member or friend. 

Students brainstormed different moments in their lives and wrote those down in their writers notebooks. From there, each young author picked one memory to develop into a longer piece. Ms. Attanasio shared memoirs she had written over the years as examples.

At the celebration, a few students recited their pieces in front of the class. Then, they were able to go around the room, read each other’s memoirs and leave feedback on compliment pages. It closed out with a sharing circle, in which students discussed all that they learned about memoir writing.

“Students were given the experience of being real authors in making their work public, having a real audience and being proud of their writing,” she said. “They all did an excellent job with their memoirs and there was some very sophisticated writing.”