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Ray Barker summarises the Literacy Hour debate from the MirandaLink Archives

Why ICT | Text and Sentence-level | Non-fiction | Word-level | The Internet | Management Issues

Most schools in England are running a daily Literacy Hour - a strategy designed to raise standards of literacy and with a target of 80% of 11 year olds reaching level 4 in Key Stage 2 SATs in 2002. But how does ICT fit in to all this? There is currently a great deal of government and media hype about it. More and more technology is being installed in schools in order to enskill the children of the new millennium. It is interesting, therefore, to note that apart from a few passing references to word-processing and CD-ROMS, there is surprisingly little reference in the National Literacy Strategy Framework of Objectives to the use of ICT in the Literacy Hour. Why this omission? Well, the introduction of something as radical as the Literacy Hour is bound to create management and resource issues for many teachers and schools. Adding a computer, with all its technical foibles, into the equation might just prove to be the final straw. However, to leave out ICT would be to do a disservice to an amazingly motivating and versatile tool. The National Literacy Association ran the Docklands Learning Acceleration Project which worked with six hundred 7 and 8 year olds in school and at home. It proved that using multi-media and portable technology, as well as more traditional methods, could raise standards and expectations of children's literacy. The largest, most innovative ICT project of its time, the Docklands' schools encountered many of the problems that will arise when introducing technology into the primary classroom ...

... and tackled them head on. Now we know the Yes buts ... and they're the same when anything new is introduced (after all, does anyone remember language masters?) ... and found some, if not all, of the answers. So, before you wheel the computer trolley back into the security cupboard, and give the batteries from your portable machines back to the science co-ordinator, have a look at some of the ways in which schools working with the National Literacy Association Projects team have incorporated technology into their group work activities in the Literacy Hour.

Text and Sentence-level
Work A Year 3 class had been exploring traditional stories in Shared Reading. In their group work, using a letter template stored on a portable computer, the children wrote to a chosen character, responding to aspects of the text and giving reasons for their opinions, Objective Y3 T2 T2, 7.

The first drafts were printed out and edited with a writing partner. They used the Thesaurus to change words such as pleased and angry to delighted and fuming, Y3 T2 W17. They discussed appropriate endings for particular sorts of letters - would you write with best wishes, yours sincerely or with lots of love if you were writing to the Big Bad Wolf? This work also enabled the children to explore the use of first and third person pronouns as included at Y3 T2 S10. The final version was presented using a Clip Art computer graphic. Writing frames set up on portables and computers provide generic activities which can be related to the class books and can be developed from the Shared Reading session. They are easily used by children in their groups; they can use a spell check and Thesaurus facility and so they can work independently. The edited drafts provide an ideal discussion focus for the Plenary session. Tried and tested picture books can be a valuable resource at all levels. For example, one Year 3 class looked at the story of Not Now Bernard by David McKee, Y3 T2 T3, 8, 17. The class used a Wanted Report writing frame to hunt the monster. This required close observation of the text, but also the children had to invent some aspects needing informed guesses and some discussion - how old do you think that monster was? They downloaded their first draft onto a computer graphic and edited this with a writing partner, using a talking word processor which enabled them to hear what they had written for editing. Other activities that week included writing in character as an Agony Aunty, giving advice to Bernard about his relationship with his parents, completing a sequel and retelling the story from the monsters point of view. A child with learning difficulties used the teacher's typed text of Not Now Bernard and employed the computer's Search and Replace facility to change character and setting. This gave him a solid scaffold on which to work and he was thrilled with his results. Opportunities for this type of work occur at all ages and stages, e.g. Y5 T3 T3 focuses on retelling from a different point of view or perspective. Children are encouraged, throughout the Framework document to e.g. 'record their feelings, reflections and predictions about a book' Y5 T1 T13 - otherwise known as a book review. In order to provide some variety in what might generally be seen as a very boring activity, we have looked at ways of adapting the Database packages for computers and portables, for example to compare books by the same author (Y2 T3 T4); to explore recurring themes in books from other cultures (Y4 T3 T2) and to compare and contrast points of view and reactions to stories (Y5 T3 T7).

In this way children can become experts in their own right on some area of an author or a subject. Others in the class can ask them to recommend a book or tell them where the best place to find one is. Children are more in control of their own learning and so make the management of the group time much easier for the teacher to handle. A Year 4 class explored text level objectives Y4 T1 T1, 2 following a Shared Reading of the first chapters of The Bears on Hemlock Mountain, by Alice Dalgleish. Using a writing frame they explored the character and text, predicting what they thought would happen. They were completely wrong. This made them keen to go back and complete their book review to put the record straight. Talking Books provide an excellent group activity to follow up the teacher's Shared Reading input, and there are many of these available on the market. These have an audio facility and particularly help children who are finding reading difficult. Children can go back and interrogate the text, look up words in a dictionary and carry out the exercises on screen which these software packages contain. These books are a great motivational resource for children who are having difficulty with reading. Children can access stories that are above their actual reading level; they can participate actively in the Plenary Session, because that they will have read the book, and have understood what they have read.

Non-fiction
A Year 4 class began their topic on Ancient Greeks by appraising the content of the non-fiction books in their class for their usefulness (Y4 T2 T15) in finding out about Greek schools. Again the introduction for the week was the Shared Reading session and the work naturally grew out of this. In groups, the children began by identifying key facts in one article, drawing pictograms to represent each fact (Y4 T2 T18). Using their pictures, the children recorded their facts on a spreadsheet, paraphrasing the information in note form. They then compared the facts they had found in their first extract with another, more complicated article from another source. Having completed their findings, the children printed out their spreadsheet and decided which of the two information sources had been the most useful in providing the information they needed for their topic work. Another group, researching the Roman invasions, took the use of technology one stage further. The children posed themselves two questions - were the countries further away from Rome occupied for less time than those nearer? Why did the Romans stay so much longer in some countries? The children used a variety of CD-ROMS, maps and books to complete a database then used this information to plot 2 graphs, in order to find out answers to their questions. On their portable computers they posed a series of questions for their classmates to answer. Questioning skills are central to children working independently. How do they know what they are looking for? How do they know how much information will be needed? The computer had now become a complete resource, holding all the information needed in one format or another to answer the questions.

Word-level Work
Much of the Word-level work in the group-work time will be given to children in the form of worksheets. These will develop the idea of the first thirty minutes - picking out a particular phonic pattern perhaps, looking at the peculiarities of word building - do you drop the 'e' when you add 'ing', etc.? However many worksheets merely ask children to write in letters and children soon get wise to this. Pictures are not all they seem. A child, writing in the final consonant sounds of can and pin, thought the pictures were of a nail and of cat food. But she still wrote the correct answer. Where is the learning? Using a multimedia spelling package - and there are many about - gives children access to sound. They can hear the word. They can click on it and hear it again. They can click on the separate onsets and rimes. They can click on pictures and be told what they really are. Most packages ensure that children actually place the letters in a particular order, thus promoting a multi sensory approach to spelling. Children can also find out their scores and often print out the words they could not spell. The teacher therefore has a record of exactly what the child is doing. On the Pocket Book computers we use in schools there is a fantastic program called Spell. Basically a spell check, it also has an anagram and crossword facility. This enables children to investigate word patterns for themselves, generating words for spelling logs and class word banks, for example at Y1 T2 W3. We have seen positive results when children have used the spell check and thesaurus facilities collaboratively. These are often easier for children to use than a traditional dictionary. If they have spelt a word incorrectly a series of phonetically similar words is presented to them, e.g. did they want to write, cut, cup, cat, cap? They have to read, discriminate and choose. Children become more aware of their own spelling errors, beginning to spot patterns in the mistakes they make - 'I forgot to double the 'p' again.' rather than just 'I got it wrong.'

The Internet
The C in ICT stands for communication and the Internet is an ideal tool for allowing children to communicate. It provides a real audience and an almost immediate response to their written communication. It is strange therefore that it should be best known as an information medium; it is often compared to a library, and indeed it is, but you would not allow a child to enter the British Library with just the instruction 'Find out about volcanoes'. Many children are given simple instructions like this and told to 'surf the net'. Watch them. Like surfers, they bounce from wave to wave, they click from page to page. Of course, not a great deal happens, but you can guarantee that a piece of paper will emerge from the printer - containing somebody else's words. There is no research focus, there is no structure or purpose to the learning. We ought to be thinking in terms of 'mining the net', i.e. really getting below the surface with a purpose in mind, equipped with correct and appropriate tools. The Internet is a huge publishing house. How many children can have their work published internationally and receive back comments from anywhere in the world? It is motivational as long as it has a purpose and a response. It is notoriously difficult to read a web page, so why should children read it? We have been working with Education Extra and magazine publishers to use sport on the Internet as a focus for interesting children in literacy activities - particularly boys. Children are given the opportunity to write to their favourite football stars and receive e-mails back. They are asked to extract information from football match reports on screen, after hearing difficult words and investigating the screen dictionary, and to reformat the information from their own point of view. They can then send this electronically to publishers who will choose the best report to print in their favourite team's programme - as well as being published on the web. In this way, traditional literacy activities to involve children with language will be enthusiastically tackled. The material is constantly changing, but can be printed out for paper-based activity. In all, we are using the medium as a truly interactive communication medium for young people, providing them with an experience they can get nowhere else, all the time focusing on the language as well as the content. Consider the language possibilities of only one sentence: Berger turned provider to feed Fowler and the England striker struck a powerful deflected left foot shot into the far corner. It's close to poetry.

Management Issues
Of course, using ICT highlights management issues to be dealt with. There is nothing more frustrating to child and teacher when, after much hard effort a piece of work is completed, only to find that the printer won't print it out. Be prepared for things to go wrong, because they do and will. Here are a few guidelines from our experience:

Conclusion

You might ask why use computers? All the activities can all be done using pen and paper. Yes they can, but what we need to establish is whether ICT is the most effective tool for the task. Ask yourself the four 'e's. Does ICT:

If it doesn't, then don't use it. We have found that using ICT in the Literacy Hour can:

So, don't put your computers away. You can use them in the Literacy Hour.

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