TIPS Volume 3, No. 8
April, 2003

     Grade Level Key 
     = Elem, = Middle
     = High, = Teachers

As a 4th grade teacher at Garden Springs Elementary, Julie Stone was pondering how to help her students complete their portfolio pieces in a more efficient way. As we can imagine the students get tired of writing their rough draft, rewriting their second draft and so on until finally, it is time to type their final copy. With the classroom set of Alpha Smarts that Garden Springs bought for their keyboarding skills, Mrs. Stone decided to allow her students to try something new. I was lucky enough to be in her classroom as she began her lesson on writing a memoir. She read an example of a memoir, discussed with the students some ideas for writing their memoirs and then had them create a graphic organizer to arrange their thoughts for their writing piece. Once the students had their ideas mapped out, they choose an Alpha Smart labeled with their student number and began typing their story. The students were very excited about leaving out the usual first step of hand writing the piece and being able to go directly to typing. Once the students had a rough draft, they then transferred their work on to their network folder and are now able to access it from the computer lab or the classroom to finish their editing. Mrs. Stone voiced her concerns about this new way of writing portfolio pieces, the students may have had trouble getting all of their ideas down due to having the keys covered, but was overall pleased with her students’ attitude and enthusiasm towards the assignment. She said she may even try this again next year.