Our ISS is somewhat between what the two of you have described.
Teachers can send students, but only for one class period. Full-day
ISS is only assigned by an administrator and is usually one to
three days.
Some teachers provide assignments, some don't.
Some ideas for stand-alone ISS assignments:
* Have students complete an assignment that requires them to
reflect on the reason for being assigned ISS, the choices they made
and how they can avoid similar choices in the future. I believe
there are also some computer programs out there actually designed
for this type of situation - of course that would have the same
issues with computers that you already mentioned.
* Have students complete character education assignments (readings
at a level the students will be able to read independently, and
associated questions). If appropriate (contracts etc) the ISS
teacher could also teach a lesson in character education, with
instruction just like you'd see in the classroom, for example at
the beginning of the day. If you do this there might be a set of
lessons which you cycle through and then repeat - with the
expectation that the students in ISS won't always be the same kids
(yes, there are frequent flyers, but the frequent flyers might
benefit from the repetition of those lessons).
* Have old, discarded textbooks available and assign students
review work from those books.
* Have students work on test-prep activities. We did this for a
while but the negative side to this is that students who have
visited ISS begin to see those types of activities as
a "punishment" even when they are completed in the classroom. We
were using test-prep books for a while in ISS and this became an
issue when some of the teachers used similar test-prep books in
class. You might have this same problem with Study Island. (And it
probably goes without saying that if you do use Study Island, you'd
need to make sure that access to the game features were blocked.)
Basically you want to avoid making ISS activities "fun" or more
desirable than classroom acitivities - at the same time if anything
assigned specifically in ISS is similar to what is assigned in
class you don't want the class activity to end up viewed as a
punishment, either.
Various goals for ISS assignments: keep up with work missed from
the regular classroom, reinforce skills already learned, reflect on
ways to avoid repeat offenses and/or to improve behavior.

On 2/25/10, OP wrote:
> Wow. I'm trying to improve our ISS program and yours is much
> worse (sorry).
>
> The only students who are permitted in ISS are put there by a
> principal. Teachers send referrals for discipline issues to the
> principal and the principal determines who goes to ISS and who
> has after-school detention (if a kid misses detention, he does
> get ISS).
>
> Teachers are to send down work, but some do/ some don't. I
> actually have ISS as a duty this year and I have had several
> students who don't have work. If they don't have work, they
> must read the newspaper, but some just stare at it.
>
> My thinking is this: Many of the kids who end up in ISS are
> already low performing and a great deal of them are repeat ISS
> kids. I would like to have some type of program in place so
> students have to work on specific subject areas. For example,
> where I live there is the Study Island program which is a
> program to increase reading and math skills. The student can
> work through the program on his own.
>
> The teachers will complain because it will be like tutoring a
> lot of different kids (Yes, I'm a teacher) but it's a duty and
> it won't require the teacher to create lesson plans or to grade
> anything. They just monitor and guide students with the program.
>
> Anyway, that's one of my ideas. I'm looking for a lot of
> options because my idea will require computers and space--two
> things we don't have.
>
>
> the
>> day for talking, walking, eating in class, throwing paper,
>> sleeping, not working on an assignment, personal vendettas
>> after a child has reported a teacher, etc. Average traffic is
>> 50-60 students per day, with 3 day suspensions representing
>> the most common time frame.
>>
>> The walk-ins sit all day with no assignments and loss of
>> instructional time. The in school suspensions range from 1-5
>> days and 99% of those sent to the ISS room never receive
>> assignments from their teachers despite repeated requests from
>> the Disciplinarian to please send the assignments for the
>> kids. School policy prohibits allowing any student to leave
>> the room to go to their teacher and ask for an assignment
>> while they are serving their suspension. The administration
>> sends out sporadic reminders to the teachers to send
>> assignments but there are no consequences for the teachers if
>> they fail to comply. Privately administrators have expressed
>> their belief that the ISS students are supposed to 'suffer'
>> and falling further behind in their classwork is what they
>> deserve for being sent to ISS. Concerns about the great loss
>> of instructional time for these students are routinely ignored.
>>
>> I'm interested in responses as well.

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