Moriah third grade students have recently completed the reading of Patricia Polacco’s “Keeping Quilt.” In the story, as a way to remember their home in Russia, Anna’s family sews a quilt from old clothes from their family. The quilt symbolizes the family connections that endured through generations. The activities surrounding the quilt and the passing of the quilt down to younger family members created a tradition in Anna and, eventually, Patricia’s family. As a culminating activity, each student interviewed one older family member. The focus of the interview was on learning about special family memories and traditions in their family. At the present time, the children are in the midst of writing a three paragraph summary of their interview. While writing these summaries the children are being shown how to write more varied types of sentences and how to use a thesaurus to make their writing more interesting. They’re looking forward to learning so much about their families.