Your students can write nonfiction or fiction using technology. Their stories let you assess their mastery of skills such as sequencing, descriptive language, punctuation, capitalization, spelling, and at higher levels, assessment of synthesis and application skills. Digital story writing works for elementary through secondary levels, with the products reflecting the skill levels of students.

This story, written by a first grader in the spring of that year, demonstrates mastery of writing complete sentences and using mechanics. It also demonstrates word processing and printing skills. Inspired by what she had learned about the Iditarod, this first grader took herself to the computer and wrote the story, leaving it in the printer tray to be discovered.

Later, the story was matched with photos using Photo Story and the author narrated it, providing practice in fluency and oral reading. It is presented here as the first grader wrote it. Now a fourth grader, the author notes that pull and pulling are spelled incorrectly!

 Work sample: 1st grader: Alaska Sled Dog Race