Students worked in cooperative groups of three to five students, carefully arranged by teachers to account for diversity in gender, academic ability, and other factors. Each cooperative team of three to five students had a PowerBook. In order to move the PowerBooks from classroom to classroom, they were placed on a cart. Printer cart and PowerBooks setup. This kind of processing was particularly important for Aaron, a student with learning disabilities who needed both a strategy and tool to capture his interests and organize his thoughts.
Students select and justify their search questions.
During the teachers' team meetings, teachers would collaboratively review the portfolios to determine if intervention was needed, and how individual strategies for students would further support students with learning disabilities. The goal of Phase II, lasting only three days, was for students to develop a search plan. The language arts teacher took each of her classes to the media center. Students could mark off the materials and resources to plan their search in the Search Organizer. For each resource listed, there was additional relevant information, such as where it could be found and its citation.