In this unit, writing is integrated with the reading process in these lessons. Students use the insights they have gained from texts reading and apply them to a variety of writing tasks. Because the unit is both literary and informational, writing tasks vary accordingly.

The key skills that students build on in this unit are:
     appropriate organization of content for a range of purposes
     combining informational and literary details
     applying recently learned insights to convey information and
     understanding to others integrating information from multiple sources to explain concepts and ideas

Some of the activities are so integrated that they have been labeled as both reading and writing segments in the unit. Writing lessons include multiple opportunities for peer collaboration. In addition to specific writing lessons, there are numerous writing opportunities. For example, students regularly engage in writing short answers in response to text-based questions. In these writing opportunities, students will focus on the use of evidence from the text and on individual sentence construction.