Yesterday we read nonfiction articles about the conditions that the lumberjacks lived in at camp. Students were shocked that they only made $25 a month, didn't get paid until the end of the season, worked six days a week, and started their day at dawn.
Then, students wrote a letter from a lumberjack's perspective to their family back home explaining and complaining about life at camp by using the articles to support their complaints. The students had such a great time with this. Knowing that lumberjacks were fairly uneducated, students enjoyed misspelling words, using the word "ain't" and writing kind of sloppy. Many students even crinkled up their papers, making them look old.