Developing story-writing skills with Year 2 pupils using ICT · Developing story-writing skills with Year 2 pupils ... slide show adding sounds, ... of key story elements such as

Ways forward with ICT: developing literacy

__________________________________________________________________________________Effective pedagogy using ICT for literacy and numeracy in primary schools 57

Developing story-writing skills with Year 2 pupilsusing ICT

The school

Located in a suburb of a major northerncity, this Church aided first schoolprovides schooling from reception to Year4. By the age of five most children meet orexceed the national expectations. By theend of Key Stage 1 pupils’ attainment iswell above national standards in English,mathematics, science, design andtechnology, information technology andmusic. Planning is very detailed throughoutthe school and is used very effectively topromoted focused learning.

The teacher

This Year 2 teacher has been teaching at thisschool for eight years, principally in KeyStage 1. She attributes her ICT skills,which were non-existent until she joined thestaff, to the extremely patient IT co-ordinator and from working with thechildren. She sees teaching as quite anisolated job and values contact with othercolleagues. She values her school where:

“ you can actually go to a colleague and talkabout any problems that you’ve got or sharegood practice or just knock ideas about.”

While very positive about using ICT in thecurriculum she states that:

“If I haven’t organised and planned for usingthe computer I don’t switch it on.”

She is also eager to point out the benefitsshe derives from using ICT for recordkeeping, planning and classroommanagement. When using ICT in thecurriculum she looks for imaginative waysto link with other areas of the curriculum,always making sure ICT is not taught inisolation. However, she is conscious of thefact that ICT skills must be taught and isvery specific in targeting the skills shewants the children to concentrate on whileworking at the computer. Her usual

approach when introducing new ICT skillsto the class is to begin with a whole classlesson. As part of the project the teacherwas able to bring her class each term to theUniversity to ensure that the pupils learnedthe skills they needed in order to focus inschool on her literacy objectives.

The teacher working with a group of pupils at theUniversity to teach particular skills. The

arrangement of the seats and computers is notideal for primary pupils.

This teacher is very reflective and analyticalabout her practice. She is alwaysquestioning what she does and looking forways to improve her teaching. She wasvery positive about having members of theproject team in her classroom. Asmentioned previously she sees teaching as arather isolated profession and welcomed theopportunity to talk through her lessons withteam members.

“It has been really nice having someone inthe classroom taking a genuine interest inwhat is going on.”



The pupils

This class of year two pupils wereachieving well above national average inboth English and ICT. Many of thechildren have access to computers at home.The teacher wanted a project that wouldimprove their collaborative story writingand would stretch their ICT skills.

Three pupils from the class with their stories

When working on ICT activities the classusually work in mixed ability groups oftwo or three. The children work welltogether in these groups supporting eachother with the task at hand.

The children are confident both in using avariety of computer programs and in filemanagement, being able to save andretrieve their work with ease.

The aim of the project

This project focused on improvingchildren’s imaginative writing and buildingon their already accomplished ICT skills.The pupils had recently completed an artproject, looking at the work of Kandinskythen emulating his work both in pastels andon the computer. The teacher wanted tobuild on this ICT work in the story writingprocess. In addition, as the class hadrecently received a new computer withwhich both the teacher and class wereunfamiliar, the teacher hoped both she andthe pupils would gain a betterunderstanding of how to manage theircomputer work more effectively.

The teacher’s choices

The teacher chose to use two programs,one a painting program which also has thefacility to make slide shows (KidPix /

Brøderbund Software) the other anintegrated package (Claris Works/ClarisCorporation) both of which the childrenwere accustomed to using. The teacherchose not to use the painting facilitieswithin the integrated software at this stagebecause of the children’s skills in usingKidPix.

The children were familiar with the paintingprogram but they had never created slideshows. In this respect the teacher wanted touse the program to improve their ICT skillsand allow their work to be viewed by awider audience. This was to help thechildren be aware of the difference betweenspoken and written language and to makeuse of more formal elements in writtenlanguage. The integrated program thechildren used for editing and refining theirstories was not used to extend their ICTskills. For this part of the project theteacher wanted the children to focus onimproving their story writing and not onthe technology.

The children worked in groups of two orthree, drafting a story board on paper first.Once their initial story was down on paperthey used the painting package to createeach page, first painting the picture thenadding their text. The separate pages werethen saved in a directory the children hadcreated. Once they had completed theirpaintings they linked the pages together in aslide show adding sounds, spoken text,and a transition between pages. When thechildren learned that their slide shows wereto be shown to a wider audience than justtheir classmates many wanted to add a titlepage with credits.

Starting the story in KidPix

All the children completed the slide showtask with enthusiasm and minimum supportworking from a simple help sheet preparedby the teacher. Once the slide shows had



been completed they were viewed by thewhole class, other children in the schooland to suitably impressed parents.

A screen shot of the KidPix Slide show

The teacher understood that the paintingprogram was unsuitable for redrafting textand adopted the following approach tofurther the pupils’ work.

Each group’s work was transferred into aprogram (ClarisWorks- Mac/PC) whichshowed their original picture and text onthe top half of the screen, while the bottomof the screen allowed space for wordprocessing. A classroom helper word-processed the children’s text, mirroring theoriginal. This was so that the pupils coulduse their skills with a program with whichthey were familiar, but did not have tospend time re-typing their work. This wasbecause of the limitations of the paintingprogram in which text is ‘painted’ onto thescreen. Once written the text becomes partof the picture and it cannot be edited.However the teacher chose this approach atthis stage of the project so that she couldget the best out of the children’s familiaritywith the painting program and so that shewould not have to teach them how to usethe painting facilities within the integratedsoftware. In addition the painting programhas some features which were either notavailable in the integrated software (such assome of the tool functions) or which wereeasier for the pupils to use (such as theslide show). When she developed thisapproach the following year with adifferent class of pupils she chose to usethe integrated software and the paintingoptions within the program.

The teacher wanted the children to writemore sustained stories and develop aspectsof key story elements such as the narrative

structure or characterisation. These pageswere then printed out, original pictures andtext in the top half, word processed text inthe bottom. The teacher examined eachgroup’s work then instructed the groups onthe particular areas for improvement shewanted them to concentrate on. For somepupils it was writing in clear sentencesusing capital letters and full stopsaccurately. For others it was improved useof particular elements such as improvingthe narrative or setting through the use ofadjectives and descriptive language. Theteacher found the printouts useful as theymade her focus on what had been written.

Final draft showing both the original work andthe completed version

After discussion with the teacher thechildren returned to their work using theword processor to edit and improve theirstories, focusing on the comments theteacher had made about their writing. Oncecompleted their work was printed out andmade into booklet form.

Results from the testing

The teacher did not wish to exclude anypupils from the ICT work. As a result, allstudents participated in a writing test beforethe project began. The pupils were thenretested at the end of the term’s work



showing considerable gains in their writingscores. Similar progress was made bypupils in the Autumn term.

While is not possible to attribute thesegains solely to their use of ICT the resultsdo suggest that carefully planned andthought through ICT activities with clearlearning objectives can play a part inimproving pupils’ writing ability.

Although the main focus of the activitieshad been on improving children’scollaborative writing the teacher alsosought to enhance their IT capability. Anassessment of the work produced indicatedthat these particular children were workingwell above the national expectations.

Developing this approach

Although the teacher was very pleasedwith the progress the summer term pupilshad made in their writing she decided tomodify the approach with her new Year 2class in the autumn term. As this newclass were rather less adept at using ICTshe decided against using both KidPixwith its slide show option andClarisWorks. She felt repeating the sameactivities with this class would require toomuch emphasis on the ICT skills.

Instead she decided to use only the writingframe with some modifications. The upperhalf of the page was used by the pupilsdirectly to paint their pictures on, whilethe bottom half was used for wordprocessing. As a whole class lesson theteacher demonstrated the basic functionsof the painting program. The childrenwere then given time to become familiarwith the painting program before startingthe writing activity. In groups of two thechildren drafted a story board on paperthen began working at the computer usingthe modified writing frame. Havingalready become familiar with the paintingprogram the children were able to workindependently at the computer making useof a simple help sheet the teacher hadprepared. As with the previous class, thechildren printed their first draft, receivedfeedback from the teacher then completedtheir final versions.

Future plans

During the project, while improving herown ICT skills, the teacher came toappreciate the flexibility the integratedprogram offered her. With the introductionof the literacy hour she started to use theprogram to create active worksheets andtemplates for one group of children to usewithin the 20 minute group work session.

“I've been making work at home. I've got acomputer that's the same as the computer atschool, so obviously that makes it easier, soI've been taking whatever the phonic aspectof the literacy hour has been, and also somegrammatical points as well, and making alittle programme of work for the children tobe able to complete on the computer withinthat 20 minutes, if that is what has beenappropriate for their particular day.”

She sees these activities as very useful andfeels she can really tailor them to eachgroup’s needs. Given the structure of theliteracy hour she feels she is much morefocused on what she wants to achieve withthe computer. She is thinking ahead to thenumeracy hour and can see opportunities touse the program in a similar manner.

Features of ICT

When the children were creating their slideshows they were making use of thecapacity and range function of ICT. Inparticular they were using a range of formsto present information including images,sound and speech.

Provisionality, the function of ICT whichallows changes to be made easily andalternatives to be explored readily,permitted the children to edit and refinetheir work in their writing frames. In theirslide show creations this feature of ICTallowed them to experiment with differentsound and transition effects.

Summary

The teacher was able to make effective useof ICT to improve pupils’ writing. She feltthe pupils in the summer term benefitedfrom having a wider audience for theirwork on slide shows and would haveadopted a similar approach in the autumn



term if her new pupils had possessedhigher levels of ICT skills.

The ICT activities were designed toencourage the children to focus on theirwriting when drafting and redrafting theirwork. The teacher used the paintingprogram to teach them specific ICT skillsand to encourage creativity in theirillustrations as part of her teaching of the ITcurriculum. She felt that this encouragedthe pupils to develop their stories and usemore descriptive language which was partof her specific literacy teaching for theterm. She enjoys teaching in this way andlikes to develop activities which linktogether in a meaningful way for pupils.

“The focus of the project was on the literacy.However it was teaching the skills and theuse of a painting package to stimulate theirimagination when it came to illustratingtheir story. So because they'd got the skillsto be able to paint and produce a picture, Ithink it developed their actual writing skills.It gave them much more of a purpose and itmotivated them to keep going and to want toimprove and refine their story.”

She feels she has come to appreciate thatyou do not necessarily need to make use ofoverly sophisticated software to use ICTsuccessfully in your teaching.

Further reading

Deadman, G. (1997) ‘An analysis ofpupils’ reflective writing within ahypermedia framework’, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning , 13, 16-25.

Collins, J., Hammond, M. and WellingtonJ. (eds) (1997) Teaching and Learning with Multimedia , London: Routledge.

(The case studies in Chapter 5 and issues inChapter 6 are particularly relevant to usingmultimedia in primary schools.)

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Developing story-writing skills with Year 2 pupils using ICT · Developing story-writing skills with Year 2 pupils ... slide show adding sounds, ... of key story elements such as