Last week I attended a literacy and ICT course with Innes Kennard. The first activity we did with Innes was looking at a poem by Shel Silverstein. He had muddled the order of the poem and it was our job to put it back together. Without reading for meaning the children can not accurately piece the poem back together. I have since started the bases of a digital file of poems out of order for children to put back into order. It is interesting that some of the children do not pick up on the clues that follow on while others find the rhyme the clue. One poem I used had about marching and the next line went left, right, left, right, but some children did not make the link between the action of marching. Another interesting comment he made is that computer work should be collaborative and therefore should be in font size 24-36.
During Innes' teaching career Margaret Mahy would often pop into the school. She spoke to a class once saying she had one line that she really wanted to use in a book. The sentence has ended up in a short story 'Chocolate Porridge and Who Ate It.' But the powerful point was that Margaret Mahy told the children "I never know how a story starts until I know the end." Innes then set the challenge of perhaps starting with the last sentence first during writing time. Writing it at the top of the page and then beginning the story but having that ending there as a reminder. This is something I am yet to try but I am keen to give a go particularly with a few of my boys who hate planning their writing but say they have all of their ideas in their head. Maybe they do and putting the sentence at the top will give me piece of mind that they know where they are heading?
Innes had an example of a procedural piece of writing that again he had distorted the order of. This time he had created a table so that children could transfer the information across in the correct order. A great idea for reading for meaning but I also thought it would be great to use on my students who struggle to sequence their writing in order of the events.
He also had a range of images of animal or peoples eyes and using these as a starting point for a point of view piece of writing - looking at life through someone else's eyes. I have used quirky images from Worth1000 before and enjoy the discussions and stories that come out of these images. It could even be taken a step further through drama and getting the children to look at an image and then tapping them on the shoulder getting them to tell others what they are thinking (pretending the image is them, keeping with the point of view aspect).
Innes also set up digital cloze activities by double clicking on a word and selecting a red line in its place. Then when the children add the missing word in it will show up in red as they write over top of the line. Not having the words in a word bank they may come up with slightly different words but this in itself is a great exercise in synonyms.
A punctuation exercise we did was in having an un-punctuated piece of writing. He told us how many paragraphs the original copy has and we had to try and find where they fitted. The reason for telling the kids how many paragraphs there are is that otherwise they will add in five times the number of paragraphs there really are.
Handwriting was another area he spoke about. Computers are the way of the future and the modern version of handwriting is typing. From now on I am going to get one child to complete their handwriting on the computer using the keys and getting used to where the letters are on the keyboard. (Perhaps I should be doing this at writing time as well)? Innes talked about separating the keyboard into left and right sides (the letters you type using your left hand and the letters you type on your right hand side). Knowing what level they are on the bottom, middle or top row and what they sit next too. With increased typing speed the ideas are able to flow more easily.
Innes finished by briefly touching on a writing competition through NZTA.govt.nz which would be good to check out.
The ideas were all great ways to incorporate ICT into your daily programme, it is still difficult with one classroom computer and teacher laptop however to feel like everyone is involved and making the most of their time. But I still feel that there are lots of great ideas that can be implemented straight away.
