|
ICT and Literacy - Years 3/4
|
|
|
Helen Smith, NGfL Adviser
|
See also ICT Integrated Tasks for the different Year Groups
Uses of ICT to support Literacy.
- Using a word processor to organise different forms of writing
- Writing for specific audiences - ability to adapt and re-draft
- Writing letters for real purposes - compare E-mail and letters
- Programmable robots - framing precise instructions
National priority: shared writing
- Teaching children how to compose, with attention to sentence construction
- Teacher modelling the process: relate to what they have read.
- The teacher should write. Ask children to pick out the parts that lend themselves to, say, a suspense paragraph.
- Balance of composition, scribing skills.
- Have specific objectives in mind, to focus teaching, e.g. the use of grammar.
- Importance of oral work before written.
- Teachers are less confident in modelling, so much teaching is retrospective.
- Teach parts of 'how to write', e.g. openings, characterisation, settings.
- Practise in the twenty minutes, e.g. every three weeks. Give pupils the chance to do some extended writing.
How can ICT support the teaching of writing? What is unique about ICT as a writing medium?
In the Literacy Hour.
Make sure the overriding objectives are concerned with Literacy, not ICT. There is bound to be overlap as pupils consolidate ICT.
- Highlight main points, re-work and present
- Sentence level work - combine, re-order and change words in sentences
- Mark elements of text - words, phonemes
- ICT assists the teacher in re-capping
- Presenting outcomes in plenary - display, printout, audio tape
Children should be prepared beforehand with the ICT skills they need for the task. Otherwise, ICT takes over!
Ideas for using a word processor
- Add punctuation, capitals to a prepared text
- Highlight particular phonemes or parts of speech
- Use 'Find' to make a collection of words with particular strings
- Add adjectives, adverbs; replace 'nice' etc.
- Break a poem into lines in different ways, or jumble up the lines of a rhyming poem
- Create cloze texts by replacing some words with symbols.
Uses of MS Word
- Features such as text boxes, highlighter and search / replace can be used in word / sentence level
- Use AutoShapes Callouts in teaching direct / indirect speech
'How To...' sheet on text boxes (Word 6.0/95)
Guided writing
- The computer is a good focus for group work led by the teacher
Emphasis on teacher modelling the writing process
- Editing a previously composed text
- Looking at a published text - e.g. how is suspense created?
ICT supports independent work
- Word banks, talking WP
- Spell check, trying alternatives
- Surface corrections are easier to make without trace
- Plan best presentation for audience
- Software to reinforce aspects of spelling and grammar
Further ideas .
- Compare a range of non-fiction texts: identify features such as lists, headings, bullets, appropriate captions
- Create book reviews for an audience
- E-mail to other classes for comment
- Lists of instructions to be tested and edited
- Introduce layout to publish work - centre, spacing, underline, illustrations
- Speech bubbles and speech marks
- Font size, and italics
Web sites to support teaching Literacy
- Your CLA agreement does not cover electronic copies. Authors may have given permission for their work to be published on the Web. However, copying and pasting into your own teaching materials are not covered.
National Literacy Framework with additional teaching resources
Stories from the Web
CLEO Teachers
For more Literacy teaching resources:
ICT Teachers
Primary Resources
Literacy Lesson
|
