Feature Article Reflection

By Anastasia

Go see my Feature Article:

 Writing my feature article was one of my favorite informational writing projects. I started researching my topic about a month ago, in early November. When my teacher asked the class to pick a topic to write an article about, D-Day immediately came to mind, so I chose D-Day. D-Day was a very important World War II battle. I have a really big passion for World War Two. Once I picked my topic, I started researching right away, thinking of possible headlines and titles.

 As I started researching deeper, I found that D-Day was more than just soldiers with guns trying to beat Germany. I found out that there was another force rebelling against the German soldiers, the French Resistance. As soon as I found out about the French Resistance, I was intrigued. I looked around my house for all my D-Day books and I found some books on the French Resistance. I was so excited to start writing my article, I thought it would be as easy as pie, but I was so wrong. I found it challenging to think of possible headlines, and couldn’t find all the information I needed, that I had to get really soon! But then I got a genius idea! I could look online! I felt pretty stupid I hadn’t thought of that before, but now that I realized I could go online, I was pretty confident. I found so much information and I knew I was ready to type.

 I started with the most important thing about the D-Day invasion, the five beaches. That’s going to be one of my headlines, I thought. I started blasting away with the keyboard, and after the school day, I was so proud of my work. I showed the paragraph I wrote to my Mom. She said she liked it, but I could fix some grammar. I went through my whole paragraph looking for incorrect grammar. Then I started to realize I was using the same words in the same sentence twice. Dang, it! I thought.

 After finishing up the first paragraph I started working on some other headline ideas. One of them was Resistance sacrifices, and I ended up picking that one for my next headline. Then again I went through my research process and started editing and revising the paragraph. Soon, I had figured out the rest of the headlines. This is what I had: my intro, “The Five Beaches,” “Resistance Sacrifices,” “The German Army During D-Day,” “Why D-Day Was So Important,” and my conclusion.

 After finishing up all these paragraphs I had to format my feature article. The plan was to format it on Google slides, then print it out. Formatting was pretty hard because I needed to fit the text into each box, then I had to make the box the same size as the other, so it would look good. It was a really frustrating thing to do, and a lot of trial and error, but I learned that if something isn’t good you can always fix it. When I finally finished formatting, I had a black and white camouflage background, many pictures, and a couple of graphs. I thought it looked really good.

 Finally, the day came where we could share our feature article. I looked around and saw that everyone else’s feature article was also really good. I got a lot of feedback on my feature article. The most common thing people complimented me on was my format, and I think I agree with them. I really loved this unit, and one thing I learned was to be patient and you will get it right.