ICT in the Primary Curriculum

Over the year I have developed the use of templates to support the use of ICT in the curriculum. Often schools use word processors and typing up as a way of using ICT in the curriculum. This focuses on typing skills and takes the focus away from the subject learning objectives.

Initially I developed a storyboard template (1) that structured an account of an event. The children would plan their account by quick notes and then use digital cameras to capture the stages in freeze frames (2). These frames would then act as a support to their extended writing on the storyboard and then later transferring this to paragraphs. This storyboard developed into a structure for recounting a science experiment (3). I have used this basic structure in various forms and I have delivered this as INSET to teachers and English co-ordinators. Some teachers have repeated this INSET to their own staff.

I then developed other templates: a book cover (4), a history chronology (5) or a map (6).

The map work was developed for Chaseside Primary School to support the children creating a map of a rural village. We used Ashwell in Hertfordshire's website to find the images, a file with OS symbols and a map outline. The children then composed these images into a new map which they annotated and produced a key.

We used this approach to help the students write about their science investigation using monitoring equipment. As the data logging was taking place the children created a report with images and text recounting the investigation.

Another use has been with the FLS (Further Literacy Strategy) as children from St Matthews created adverts according to the FLS success criteria.

Other templates have been developed that implicitly teach the checklist of elements in different writing styles. I have developed instructions and arguement templates that scaffold the writing process.

advert • for and against • instructions • original storyboard • history • comics • investigation

Beyond Templates and Storyboarding

This year there are three programs which take these ideas further.

Comic Life: This package allows children to create comic strips using images. Comic strips are a great genre to support writing and perhaps motivate older boys to get interested in writing. The children can study the genre, develop a comic strip around a plan of a story (deciding what images to capture). They can then develop the dialogue (focusing on how the dialogue reveals more about the character). This dialogue becomes the basis of sppech and the captions become the narrative. The images guide the writer to remember the structure and plot. This is moving from the images to the text.

Kar2ouche: We are only just beginning to look at how storyboards can be develoepd with the props and characters included in the Kar2ouche modules. The interetsing aspect is how children can then record their voiceovers to tell their story.

Dartfish Classroom: Originally a tool for using ICT to assess and devlop PE performance. Dartfish classroom allows children to build storyboards from a video, taking key positions, The children can then annotate the images or write about them. These storyboards then become a flash based file that can be published on the Internet.