Word Template for Research Project
Here’s a new best practice for me this year. I had great collaboration with the 3rd grade classroom teacher on this project. 
Along with a research project on trees that included a lot of good hands-on scientific investigation & drawing, we had the students condense their research into a one-page document to be included in a class field guide to the trees of Vermont.
What really worked was showing the kids what it would look like when they were done, then handing them the empty template on paper to be filled in first by hand. This way they could easily which sections they still had to complete. Once they were done, they sat down to the computers and typed it up in the template.
The (slightly) professional look of the document really gave the kids a charge. I could see the difference in their attitude once they saw it coming together on the screen. Scanning and inserting their drawings was the final wow for them. They were very impressed with themselves.
On my end, it was a ridiculously simple project. I didn’t even have it together to create the template myself, I just used a Word template. (The teacher and I came up with the idea 15 minutes before class started - my typical work day.)
The only drawback to the project was using Word. The template was insanely buggy, and the classroom teacher really needed me around for all of the word processing sessions to help out. It was a real mess, and I’ve been looking for a replacement ever since. I like many of the other online & open source word processors, but it seems none have cool templates - yet. I am eagerly awaiting hearing otherwise.