I used this lesson during assessment times with my third, fourth and fifth graders. They had all been sitting at a computer for two hours already and I didn't want them to have to sit through a typing lesson. I also didn't want to lose the class period to games so this was a good solution.
I had all the students sit at their computers and open a document in Word.
I had them increase their font size to 16 and pick a font that is readable (no wing-dings!).
I set a timer for six minutes and had them start a story. If they couldn't think of anything, I told them to recap a television show, movie or book but to change the names so the other students didn't know who they were talking about.
After six minutes, we switched computers. Students added to the story.
We switched again after six minutes to new computers.
The fourth person to write on a story finished it up.
The rules were that the stories had to be appropriate (no guns, nothing mean about other students), that you couldn't change anything anyone else wrote and it had to make sense.
For the most part, the students really enjoyed it. I have a few students who were upset that their story was "ruined" by other students but, other than that handful, my kids loved this project. I had many requests to do it the following week.
In a few of my classes that didn't need the supervision, I joined in. I started a story and then rotated to three other people's stories.
Students were able to print out their stories and take them home. I found out later that most of the classroom teachers let the students exchange their papers to share their stories since the kids were very curious about other students' stories.
It was a fun way to practice our typing skills. It also helped make a point about WHY we should learn to type faster and more accurate. . . some kids took six minutes to write a sentence and others were able to complete a paragraph. I saw the light dawning on a few kids!
~Jennifer~
