Introduction
Jan's account shows how
she approached the challenge of introducing ICT in a whole-class lesson.
The report includes direct links to the Sebastian
Swan resources which Jan found so useful.
I began with Sebastian Swan's book The
Swan Story. Unfortunately, at the time we were experiencing great
difficulties in connecting to the Internet. I copied The Swan Story
into Microsoft Word, including the pictures. I printed the pages and
had them professionally enlarged for a very reasonable price. I was
able to do the A3 laminating at school. The hard copy is an excellent
Big Book resource for the Literacy Hour if one is unable to get on line,
and the children love reading the book.
I have used this method to reproduce In
the Autumn, Sebastian's
Waddle and the cvc book Sebastian's
Rhyme. These books are an excellent non-fiction resource with beautiful
photographs and sound effects, as well as interesting texts. They inspire
wonderful follow up work. I have based whole class assemblies on these
books.
Children have written their own non-fiction books
based on exploring the school grounds. My class read Sebastian's Waddle
and afterwards went for a walk around the school grounds. It was surprising
how much the class noticed . "We walked to the woods. We saw long yellow
things hanging from the tree. What can they be? They were hazel catkins,
like caterpillars." They called their book Signs of Spring Walk, using
the same style as Sebastian's Waddle.
In the Autumn
Term, our Science topics were Our Senses and Sound. We made it fun by
going on various 'senses' walks in the school grounds. The children
noticed, heard and smelt a lot!! The cvc Rhyme book has inspired the
children to write their own rhyme book and illustrate it using the Colour
Magic program.
A good way to reward the children when they have
been on line is to give them a Sebastian Swan label. Do this by following
the Literacy
Link Reward Stickers instructions, which are very clear. It's easy
to make Literacy Hour signs in Publisher 98. I selected the Sign wizard,
and followed more or less the same procedure as when making the stickers.
Examples of labels are:
Red group are working on their own.
Blue group are working with Miss ---.
White group - shared and guided reading with
Mrs ---.
Our work with Sebastian Swan gave me the idea
of writing my own books. I wrote a simple story based on the "Tom
and Jill" vocabulary. With the help of my computer literate classroom
assistant, children wrote their own ending to the story and illustrated
it.
In the Literacy
Hour we do lots of flash card and phoneme work using laptops. Children
benefit from illustrating their own work, using Talking First Word
(they can write their name and captions using "draw") or Colour Magic.
This is an encouraging way for children to improve their fine motor
skills.
If you want to make a Big Book, children can
draw in black and white using Colour Magic. After the printed copy
has been enlarged, they can colour it in. We have used this method
to retell well-known stories, and to write children's own version
of stories, for example Goldilocks and The Three Bears, The King's
Socks, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Train Trip and others.
For this work, each group had a 20 minute slot
in the Literacy Hour throughout the week. Once the story has been
written in a talking word processor, it may be shared with the group,
or with the whole class, using a large display. In a one-to-one setting,
adult and child may read the story together. The child may then read
the story with support provided by the computer. This builds confidence
as the child begins to read independently.
The Literacy Hour provides opportunities to teach
ICT skills. Take advantage of a non-fiction slot which includes writing
instructions, letter writing, dictionary work etc. For example, we
discussed different ways of sending messages - writing a letter, using
the phone, sending a fax and sending an email. I talked through the
process of sending an email, demonstrating the different stages. Children
wrote to Sebastian, and some of their letters may be seen on the pin
board.
Having a data projector is an advantage as it
is an excellent resource for whole class teaching. A child in my class
summed it up by saying, "It's better than going to the pictures!"
Useful strategies
Ask children to write their own class rules
for using the computer.
Train at least two children as computer tutors.
Use direct questioning and don't hesitate to hold
technical discussions. Encourage all children to take part.
An excellent way to teach punctuation is
to word-process some text with no punctuation. Display on the large
screen, then read it aloud, thinking where the full stops should go.
This emphasis on technical skills helps children structure their own
writing and write correctly in sentences.
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