Preparatory work
The teacher needs to consider the intended audience for the pupils' fact
files. A few examples might be: to develop a display for a 60's disco,
make a presentation for a class assembly, to write an e-mail to a relative
born in the early 50's or to create a class book during the year on famous
people, etc.
The teacher should, as a matter of good practice, check the website prior
to the pupils to ensure that it does not contain inappropriate information.
There are other sites containing information about John Lennon which may
not be entirely suitable for pupils to access independently.
Teacher writes the research questions on the board in preparation for
the whole class teaching section.
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The Lesson
Whole Class Teaching
Teacher displays or hands out the William Morris
fact file. Give the pupils the opportunity to discuss the following
question with their response partner.
Q What makes this an effective fact file?
Pupils to record their responses.
Teacher collates the key features to create a check list to be used in
the plenary, which will include:
Purpose, organisation and layout, clarity, short, concise extracts, clear
graphics, acknowledgement of sources, etc.
Teacher now explains the task. Pupils will research and gather information
about John Lennon which they will use to create a fact file, taking into
account the key features identified in the William Morris fact file and
the intended audience.
Q What do you know about John Lennon?
Teacher collates the responses on a flipchart/whiteboard.
Since pupils will be gathering images, text etc. from the Internet it
will be good practice to encourage them to store these in a new folder.
If necessary the teacher should demonstrate how to create a new folder
in their work area
Teacher writes the URL for the website on the board and instructs pupils
to navigate to
http://www.legend-johnlennon.com/index_e.html
Q How can we save this site as a favourite? Why would we want to do
so?
Ensure that all pupils know how to bookmark a favourite site. Give pupils
five minutes to explore the contents.
Q Which sections are going to most useful to us for gathering facts for
our fact file?
The sections on which they will need to concentrate are: Documentary and
Pictures.
Teacher instructs the pupils to look at the Pictures page and focus on
images of John Lennon at various stages of his life. Teacher displays
the following research questions:
Q What do these pictures show about his early life and the type of
family he might have come from?
Q What differences do you notice between the images of him as a young
adult and those of him later in his life?
Q Where do you think these pictures came from?
Q Can you identify common features of earlier photographs?
Remind the pupils, if necessary, how to copy and save images. To copy
an image from the Internet click the picture with the right mouse button
and select Save Picture As. Pupils should navigate to and save the picture
in their newly created John Lennon folder.
Teacher tells pupils to open a new word processing or presentation document
and minimise. The teacher then demonstrates selecting a small relevant
extract of text from the documentary section of the website and emphasises
the importance of selecting a few words or a short phrase rather than
large chunks of text.
Q Why am I limiting you to a small extract?
The reason is that we are creating a fact file. If we wanted to know everything
about John Lennon we would use a website or a book. What we want to create
is a short, concise summary of the key points of his life for our audience.
The teacher should remind pupils of the importance of acknowledging all
information extracted from the Internet.
Q Why do we need to record the source of this information?
The teacher should introduce the terms: copyright and intellectual property,
explaining that these extracts were written by somebody else and when
we use them in our fact file we need to give credit to the author.
Main Activity
Pupils now have an opportunity to create their own fact file.
Prompt the pupils to skim the Documentary section, looking for: significant
dates, biographical details, why the Beatles stopped working together,
what John Lennon did after that, what he did to gain publicity, what he
was trying to tell people or achieve?
Normally one might select and copy the whole passage in order to edit
offline, on this occasion the focus is on extracting relevant information,
this will need emphasising to avoid pupils selecting large and irrelevant
extracts.
Pupils then:
look at images
skim the Documentary section and copy a relevant fact and paste it into
their selected application
copy and paste an appropriate image to accompany this fact
repeat for up to five images
During the lesson teacher interaction with pupils should draw attention
to the use of particularly relevant short pieces of text and appropriate
images to reinforce the learning objectives.
Q Why do you think that fact/image will be particularly useful in your
fact file?
When pupils select extracts from the Documentary to save or copy and paste,
it is important that time is not wasted with choosing fonts, size, etc.
Once all five images and short, relevant extracts of text have been pasted,
pupils may now take time to format their fact file to include titles,
sub-headings, footnotes and acknowledgements.
Teachers should also ensure that pupils' fact files retain a focus on
their intended audience. One way of doing this would be to draw pupils'
attention to the different styles that would be required for different
audiences.
Q If your fact file was intended to be displayed at parents' evening
how would it be different to a fact file for a class assembly?
Plenary
Pupils use check list of key features, created in the introduction, to
evaluate another pair's work against the criteria. Teacher may need to
demonstrate using one example if the pupils are not used to this way of
working. Pupils could either hotseat to do this or print their work out.
Q How would you change your fact file if it was intended for a different
audience, e.g. for your friends?
Why use ICT?
The internet provides easy access to a wide range
of images for the children to use in order to learn about aspects of recent
history. Use of the website ensures the lesson maintains pace since the
teacher and pupils can explore a range of resources rather than being
tied to paper based resources, which may be difficult to photocopy. The
wide range of pictures show his early life and the type of family he might
have come from as well as some biographical details, which the children
can copy into their own fact files.
The website provides plentiful resources for the whole class to view;
the text and images can be copied and easily formatted to suit the purpose
of the task. Pupils can take pride in a presentation which looks professional
and the skills learned are transferable to other curriculum areas.
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