The activities took place
in a series of ten lessons over a period from October 1999 to the
end of February 2000. The children undertook many activities around
the subject of communicating and description during these lessons.
They were also introduced to the computer and the idea of electronic
mail.
We made use of a digital projector
to display the computer screen to the whole class. We also used
a digital camera to record children's work.
Here is a summary of the successful
ideas that we used to introduce our Reception children to computers
and the idea of electronic mail.
Introductory
activities
I outlined the plan
for the project, showing children a laptop and talking about how
we can send letters through the computer.
We talked about machines
and what they do.
We talked about machines
and computers in school.
The children completed several
tasks including a collage of machines, using catalogues and magazines.
They also picked out machines from a picture and coloured them
in.
We talked about the need to listen
carefully in school and the classroom.
The children completed a listening
picture that involved listening to instructions to complete a
drawing. This was very successful.
Using computers
to communicate
I explained the
parts of a computer, using a sheet from 'Information Technology
Skills'.
I explained the
use of e-mail. We sent an e-mail that was written in Shared Writing
to Sherington.
We shared on screen
the reply that we received from Sherington.
Thinking about
monsters
I read and shared
with the children some monster stories (Two Monsters and The Monster
and the Teddy Bear by David McKee and The Monster Bed by Jeanne
Willis and Susan Varley).
We read I was a Class 2 Monster and looked
at the Monster in the story.
We read a description from the Internet of
The Ssenizal (a monster, also, as you may have noticed, laziness spelled backward) and
we then drew the Monster.
We read Not Now Bernard. We talked about
the monster and what he looked like.
When they were ready the children
were given a set of shapes that they would use to draw the monsters.
We thought that limiting the shapes would help them in phrasing their
descriptions later. This would enable us to focus on elements of their
vocabulary.
We then drew our monsters on paper
and coloured them in. When they were finished the children wrote their
descriptions of the monsters. We used a table with headings to help
the children word process their descriptions. Here is Oliver's monster.
Next, we sent our descriptions (words
only) to Sherington by e-mail. A little later we took digital photographs
of our pictures and sent them by e-mail as well so that the Sherington
children could compare the drawings they had made from our descriptions
with the originals.
Shortly
after we received some e-mail from Sherington. We shared the messages
and descriptions of children's monsters from Sherington. As a
class we drew Lloyd's monster with the description being shown
on the data projector.
The
children were then able to have a go at drawing Sherington's monsters
from their text-only descriptions. Finally, we received the original
monsters from Sherington by snail mail. The class were able to
talk about the similarities and differences that they could see.
