Over the past week, my fifth graders have created stories with first and second grade students. They did this work independently... in a room connected to mind, but with little guidance, other than an occasional "walk through" and check in my one of a couple of adults. They did a fantastic job, and the one thing I am most interested in is the apparent improvement in their spelling and grammar.
Their first stories were just painful to read... of course it was early in the schools year... they were using a new system... we could go on and on to brainstorm reasons they did not write well. With these (about their third stories they handed in) the problems were (in my estimate and the estimate of the other adult who helped me review them) less than half the problems there were in their first stories.
I have no hard evidence to support my observation and I can establish no cause or effect, but it appears that having students write for real audiences and using technology does lead to improved writing.
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