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LAKE OSWEGO, Oregon—Cindy Kim's classroom at West ridge Elementary School has a homey, lived-in feeling. The decor includes three well-worn couches, a bookshelf filled with student favorites, round tables instead of square desks, and cubbyholes jammed with art supplies. The informal surroundings match the comfortable way her fifth- and sixth-grade students interact. This afternoon, crammed into a corner, four of them jostle each other, bickering good naturedly about whose turn it is to use the two Macintoshes and freely exchanging comments and advice. "Kyle, do you know how to make the earth blue? Adam, do you know how to make the earth blue? Kelsey, do you know how to make the earth blue?" A problem with the usually cooperative, electronic painting tools prompts Zack to query his classmates. Kelsey offers her solution, then stares at the screen in disbelief when it doesn't work: "That should be blue!" Kim's students are using integrated software (ClarisWorks) to make "shelf talkers"-informational tags that hang off the edge of a retail shelf under a product. In this case the products are children's books; the shelf talkers are for a local, independent book chain. The assignment combines elements of the reading, writing, and visual arts curricula, while giving students the chance to make something that serves a purpose in the world outside of school. "We always try to integrate our curriculum and naturally incorporate computer technology skills into it," says Kim. Student book choices range from popular fiction with titles like The Voice on the Radio and The Face on the Milk Carton to classics like Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth and Walter Farley's The Black Stallion. The shelf talkers include the title and author of the book, a few descriptive sentences meant to hook the reader without revealing the book's ending, an illustration, and the student's name, grade, and school. Students must write the text in the word processor. Clip art is not allowed. Zack's shelf talker on Journey to the Center of the Earth reads: If you like adventures you must read this book. Imagine you are Oliver Lindenbrook, a well known scientist. You are in the middle of the earth being sucked into a whirlpool with your band of brave explorers. On your team you have the wife of one of your colleagues, one of your students, and a Icelander named Hanz. Will they ever make it out? Or will they be doomed to live in the center of the earth FOREVER! The book's title is in red. Behind the text floats an image of the earth. Below is Zack's computer drawing of a toothy, green dragon. The text and graphics are laid out in a column on the width of half a letter-size piece of paper cut lengthwise. When completed, the shelf talker is mounted on colored paper, laminated, and folded approximately in half (widthwise) so it can hang off the shelf in Kim's class and the one at the bookstore. Some students have put thought into issues such as what style or color of font is most appropriate to their book. A girl writing about The Black Stallion uses a dark, flowing script which she feels expresses the mysteriousness of the horse. A boy writing about a book set in World War II Japan puts its title in red, matching the red suns on his illustrations of the Japanese flag. Last year, Kim had students begin the project by hand. "I gave them a sheet of paper to work with and said, 'Write it in handwriting, do your drafting on paper,' and they had such a difficult time handwriting, knowing where to lay out, how big to write, how little to write to get all their information in. We tried it on the computer after that, and it was so much easier to edit, to work with, to include things, and even the graphics." Working with the computer encourages the students to look to each other when they need help. "Some kids know more about computers than others," acknowledges sixth-grader Darcy. "With one teacher and 29 students-or as your numbers increase-it's harder and harder to get to each child," says Kim. "The computer's a great place for kids to practice teaching each other, sharing with each other, problem solving. And they're real problems, and everyone's is a little bit different." The computer-based project also creates a natural forum for students to comment on each other's work. Today, classmates in the computer corner encourage one boy to experiment with different colors for the book's title: "Why don't you try dark blue?" says one. "Why don't you just make it black?" says another. "When you bring someone else's eye on to it, it's so much easier and faster for a student to edit right there and then-testing it," says Kim. "You can't test a different color if you've already colored it [by hand], unless you redo it and start over." Kim structures the shelf-talker assignment with students' computer habits in mind: "We try to have them do content first, then go back and do all the enhancing, because their initial action is to go for the graphics and fonts, styles, and all of that stuff." Last year her class made shelf talkers at the end of the year when students had already had lessons on many types of software. "Last year they used skills they already had . . . so they were taking it and putting it together for the first time, " she says. "This year we used it as a beginning lesson tool for painting and drawing. So you can really use it as a culminating project or use it as a project to introduce some skills." Kim likes the fact that on the computer, students who want to explore different graphic techniques can do so, while students who don't like to take risks can undo their work as quickly as they did it. And though using the computer is required for the text portion of the assignment, she builds in additional flexibility by allowing students, if they wish, to illustrate the shelf talker by hand. Says Kim: "Parents have different philosophies about what role the computer plays, so we do try to balance, and give students choices."
On integrated software:
On printing:
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Date of Last Update: 9/28/01 
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TEACHER'S
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