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Carol Rainbow, Primary ICT Advisory Teacher shares some tried and tested ideas on developing the use of email with students.
The OCN has been available to schools for several years now and all pupils have their own email addresses. One really good way of teaching children how to use e-mail is to run a simple, short term, email project with another school. It does not have to be far away, my first ever project was with a school about four miles away so that a few children already knew each other from brownies, cubs, etc.
There are few rules to running projects, but here are a number of tips from people who have already run a project:
Set a clear start and end date covering just a few weeks so that all pupils have several opportunities to send and receive messages but not so long that they get into a rut and do not know what to say when they write
Make the subject content part of your curriculum
Give the pupils a clear task – they need to understand what information is to be exchanged so that messages are clear and have content. It is too easy for children to carry out an exchange as if they are talking in the playground. Questions like what is your favourite film, game, food, did you see that programme last night, etc. require one or two word answers and effectively end the exchange. See below for a list of ideas to start with
For younger or less able pupils let them work in groups. They can plan one or two sentences each and each person can type up a line or two but there will not be the expectation that a whole message needs to be written by each individual. Also in this way there are fewer letters for checking before they are sent
Sharing information on a topic such as; What were the effects of the Second World War on children in their local area? Children can exchange a fact sheet of information they have gleaned from visitors. Alternatively they might email people who lived through the Second World War
Work collaboratively on a data handling project where pupils collect and exchange data about themselves or something similar
Each school survey classroom waste and set about reducing it, recycling it etc. Schools then compare their progress and share ideas.
Exchanging book reviews with discussions about which authors to read and which books to try. This may lead to a class book in each school showing reviews and suggestions with suggested books purchased, read and reviewed.
Writing a joint story, one school starts the stories, the second school adds a paragraph or two and it is passed back and forth between the schools until the stories are complete. Each story then could be illustrated and printed in both schools and passed on to younger children to read
A weather watch is always interesting but this is better with schools slightly further apart so that there is a contrast in weather conditions during the project
A couple of schools who have already
planned or undertaken e-mail projects tell us of their experiences:
Anna Fairhurst from Stonesfield writes when linking by e-mail to years 3 and 4
pupils at Holy Trinity School:
We stuck to the old-fashioned pen
friends idea: one of us would ask the other to email their e-pal about
something, e.g. the school Christmas play, and send an attachment, and the
e-pal would reply about their experiences. We both felt this was ideal as
neither of our classes (Y3 and Y4) had ever used email before. It took two or
three lessons before the children were confident in how to send, receive and
reply to messages, but it was highly successful. Certainly, my previously
non-emailing children now love it and have been sending emails backwards and
forwards between friends at home. Jo and I are hoping to continue this term
with something more curriculum-focused.
Paul Shaughnessy from St Nicholas writes:
At St. Nicholas Primary, Old Marston, we are currently planning an e-pals project with Northbourne CE (A) Primary in Didcot. Our year 3 and 4 classes have been honing their OCN skills over the last term and are now excited about testing them out with 'real people'! Although still in the planning phase, we are hoping to exchange some writing for a common Literacy topic, with the pupils acting as 'critical buddies', praising effective features and suggesting possible improvements. Hopefully writing for a 'real audience' of peers will help develop both Literacy and email skills.
Janet Hunt from Hill View writes:
We are doing a really big input into the new school web page. My year 6 pupils have been creating pages and attaching them to emails to send them to our secretary ready to be added to the website. This is e-mailing for a real purpose so we thought it would be a good way of teaching attachments. We are hoping for some e-mail partners for my pupils in the coming term.
If you want to start a project put a
message into the OCN e-pals conference
http://mail.theocn.net/ > Everyone> Curriculum> SDS ICT> e-pals. There are
schools ready and waiting to create a link.
