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The Lesson
Whole Class Teaching
Prior to this session you may have visited a Roman site or
museum. However it is not essential and there is sufficient information
on Grid Club to enable children to carry out this activity. If the class
has been on a visit you will want to use resources e.g. digital photographs
etc. but there may be additional information on Grid Club that may be
useful.
Explain to the children that they are going to create a guide describing
some of the evidence and artefacts they saw on their visit for their parents.
Q What do we remember about our visit?
The children might suggest they saw Roman baths, pottery, jewellery, Roman
roads and information about houses including latrines, hypocaust systems
etc.
Record these responses on a flipchart.
Explain to the children that they are going to be restricted to a four
page presentation, using Textease, to encourage quality rather than quantity,
which will include: digital photographs, images from the Internet, text
plus one or two sound recordings.
Teacher opens the ready made Textease file Romans.t2
and displays page 1.
Q What types of information can you see?
The children might suggest there is an image of a Roman road, some text
and an icon for a sound recording. Click on this to listen. How does this
engage the reader? More interesting than lengthy text?
Q From your visit is there any information that you could add to this
page?
The teacher should demonstrate how to add an additional piece of information
- Roman roads were generally very straight.
Teacher scrolls down to second page of presentation, which is blank. Demonstrate
to the children how to insert a graphic, in this case mosaic.jpg
Q What information could we add to our page?
The teacher can type it straight on to Page 2 editing into concise sentences
as necessary.
The teacher demonstrates how to navigate to the Grid Club website
www.gridclub.com
>Look it up >Fact File > Romans> Town House > Mosaic
Explain to the children that there is some additional information available
here i.e. Laying mosaics was a very skilled job.
Rather than typing this in, show the children how to record this as a
sound file in order to expand on the information already on the page.
Open a new file select Tools > Record a sound.
Click the red button to begin to record a sound and the blue horizontal
bar to stop recording. If children wish to re-record their information
they should drag round the sound icon to select it and then press delete.
Alternatively they could just close the file without saving it and open
a new one.
The teacher should expect that children may need several attempts before
they are happy with their recording. They should then save their file,
with help if necessary.
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Main Activity
The children discuss and agree with their partners on the four areas
that they will include in their guide. Each page should include either
details from their visit or information obtained, but not copied, from
the Internet; this could be as text, graphics or sound files. Remind them
that they should only record two sound files, as these can be very large
files and create storage problems on computer networks. Send the children
to the computers to create their guide using the ready made Textease
file Romans.t2 which has 5 pages with hyperlinks already inserted.
During the main activity children are to complete the first four pages
only.
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Plenary
Draw the children back together and discuss the source of their information
e.g. Grid Club, museum visit etc.
Explain that the fifth page at the end of our guide is to acknowledge
the sources of information used. This is because we have used other people's
work in our guide and we need to give them credit. The teacher now demonstrates
how to add acknowledgements e.g. Grid Club as a source.
If time allows children can modify their guides to include their acknowledgements.
Why use ICT
Demonstrating
The teacher can effectively demonstrate the process of creating the Roman
guide book to the whole class and during this the teacher can draw out
the important historical information. The use of multimedia means that
the presentation can easily be modified in the light of interactions and
discussions with children. This will involve some aspects of shared writing,
where the process of planning and composition may be demonstrated by the
teacher.
Accessing and analysing
ICT allows access to information in a wide variety of forms and formats
e.g. digital photographs from their Roman visit, previous information
from class work and from the Internet. The use of ICT to quickly change
information provides the teacher with opportunities to engage with children
at a higher and/or deeper level and, in particular, facilitates analysis
and interrogation. In this example children will access non-fiction reading
texts and can incorporate them in to their own interactive, multi-media
work.
Presenting, re-presenting and communicating
This guide book is presented in a more exciting and motivating way that
wouldn't be achieved if the task was paper based. The Roman information
can be easily drafted and altered encouraging children to reflect on the
quality of their guide and the historical information it contains. Using
ICT not only provides a medium for presentation and communication, but
also opens possibilities of many new, "real" audiences, in this
case parents.
Testing and confirming
In this vignette the use of ICT takes advantage of the opportunities provided
by the speech facilities available in Textease enabling children to work
more independently and test and confirm what they have written.
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