Using Stories to Teach ICT Ages 5 to 6

Using stories to teach ICT

Ages 5–6

Anita Loughrey

Published by Hopscotch, a division of MA Education, St Jude’s Church, Dulwich Road, London, SE24 0PB

www.hopscotchbooks.com

020 7738 5454

2012 digital version by Andrews UK Limited

www.andrewsuk.com

©2011 MA Education Ltd.

Written by Anita Loughrey

Designed by Claire White, Fonthill Creative, 01722 717029

Illustrated by Kerry Bailey

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Introduction

ICT and the primary curriculum

Today children will arrive at school with an extensive knowledge of ICT and its capabilities. They have a knowledge and understanding that can sometimes be beyond some adults. The aim in school today is to harness their experiences and use them to enhance their learning in school.

ICT today is one of the best and fastest growing tools available for learning. It helps to:

Make difficult and abstract concepts easier to explore

Make learners partners in their formal learning

Motivate learners and keep them engaged in learning

Open up dialogue with parents and extend learning

Personalise learning and give learners a voice

Raise standards

Reach the hard-to-reach

Save you time and be more efficient

In order for children to use and apply their ICT knowledge and understanding confidently and competently in their learning and everyday contexts, exciting and stimulating lessons must be provided.

ICT is no longer viewed as a separate curriculum subject but, permeates all the other subjects. The children should be provided with stimulating activities that allows them to explore and become familiar with the technology resources available in the school, across a wide range of different subject areas.

About the series

The Using stories to teach ICT series of books demonstrates how ICT skills can be taught and extended while linking to a wide variety of other subject areas. There are four books in the series – two at Key Stage 1 and two at Key Stage 2.

They offer a structured approach with the non-specialist in mind and provide detailed lesson plans to teach specific ICT skills while linking to other areas of the curriculum. Each book contains ideas for communication, modelling, presentation, databases and control.

The aim is for ICT to be presented in a format that shows how information technology is used in our everyday lives. The imaginary situations portrayed in the stories act as a stimulus for the children’s own investigations and creative work. The ideas in this series can be adapted to teach all areas of the curriculum.

Format of the books

Each book contains six stories that require the children to use and extend different ICT skills. Each story is accompanied by teachers’ notes containing four separate lessons that can be used in conjunction with the story. Every lesson plan has a corresponding activity sheet.

The teachers’ notes are broken down into the learning objective and the curriculum links with some suggestions for the type of hardware and software that will need to be made available. The activities have been sub-divided into:

Resources – this is a list of what you will need to do the lesson

Introduction – ideas to introduce the activities, with key questions and discussion points to reinforce the concepts and vocabulary required for the lesson

Main activity – ideas for grouping and using the activity sheets

Plenary – an opportunity to review and discuss the learning outcomes so children reflect on what they have learnt

Extension – further ideas to extend their skills and technological knowledge

The activity sheets can be found at the end of each chapter.

About the stories

The stories are designed to be a springboard to develop ICT within the classroom throughout a wide range of subjects due to the broad selection of cross-curricular links.

At Key Stage 1 the stories have been designed to be read aloud to the class rather than for the children to read themselves. If possible enlarge copies of the story or project it on to a whiteboard so the children are able to see the illustrations and may even be able to follow along as you read it aloud to the class. As the children get older and their vocabulary improves encourage the children to read the stories aloud to each other.

There is a lot of scope for initiating discussion about the wide range of technology used in our everyday lives and for extending from the given lesson ideas to develop children’s ICT-based projects.

Using the lesson plans

Within the planning we have added reference statements headed WALT, WILF and TIB as these or similar systems are often used to ensure lessons are focused, objective led and in context for the learner. They help summarise purpose of the lesson, what is required of the children in order for them to successfully learn that lesson and why what they are learning is important.