By the time of the culminating activity - the oral presentation of one piece of writing - students should have at least four pieces devoted to their own lives, personalities, and cultural experiences. The concluding lessons of the unit presuppose the laborious, time-consuming process of revising, polishing, and editing of one work that students consider their best. Though writing process is not very familiar and established at elementary level, we will go through its key stages, which might be manageable by holding individual conferences with students, and obtain a sound work.
The culminating activity should appear as a well-prepared celebration event where children will exhibit their public presentation skills by reading their stories, display their self-portraits, and wear their favorite national clothes. It would be a true asset to record their performances and compile one collective tape of those presented stories along with their written version. I envision that reading students' pieces out loud will provide them and their peers with a better understanding of the author's voice and furnish the work on the unit with a sense of completion.
Moreover, when students present their work orally for an audience, other components of their voices will become evident, and that, in general, will enhance their voices. For instance, their body language will add more flavor to their overall presentation. Thus, Julia Alvarez in her essay "My English" recalls that when she heard her mother speaking English and could not understand it, she "tried by other means to find out what was going on." Obviously, when a person is experiencing a certain emotion, an expression on his or her face is the same without regard to the language he or she speaks. Alvarez writes: "Whenever she spoke that gibberish English, I translated the general content by watching the Spanish expressions on her face."8