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A wide range of Primary classroom activities, reviews and resources has been developed and published over the years originally by MAPE and, more recently since the merger in 2004, by Naace.

The Direct2U service was a weekly email service produced by Becta in partnership with Naace. The service was for primary teachers and offered lesson plans featuring ICT in activities based on six subject strands. The service is discontinued but you can view the lesson plans in this archive.

ICT Year 6: Creating Electronic Big Books

The Direct2U service was a weekly email subscription service for primary teachers from Becta, which ran during 2005/6. The scheme offered lesson plans featuring ICT in activities based on six subject strands. The service has now been discontinued but Becta have given us permission to use a selection from the plans in this magazine. A full archive of all the Direct2U activities can be found at http://forum.ngfl.gov.uk/direct2u

Introduction

In this activity, children work in small groups to design and create an electronic Big Book for the younger children in the school. They will take into account the reading age and interests of younger children and the format of Big Books, and test out their books and modify them if necessary. There is not room here to give full details of how to use Big Book Maker but it is well supported with manuals and guides http://primary.naace.co.uk/activities/BigBookMaker/

The 'hotseat' guest for December is Sarah Peacock who works at one of Sheffield's City Learning Centres. I met Sarah as part of the successful Visual Learning Course which I attended earlier this year which Naace, MirandaNet based at the Institute of Education and Bath Spa University won the TDA bid to run as a CPD programme.

Sarah will be live in the 'hotseat' on Monday 15th December between 4-5pm. Please post questions before, during and after the live sessions.

Paul Williamson has spent a great deal of time empowering teachers in different subjects to use their Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) effectively. The successes have become increasingly apparent with every area of the school moving forward rapidly.

Broadgreen are one of the few high schools across the country that run a baccalaureate programme. The programme is highly successful one for their students and are Becta's ICT Excellence Awards 2008 - joint runner-up award winners for the Best whole school in the North West category.

Andrea MacBeath of Richmond Park School Richmond Park School,a special school in the south side of Glasgow, explains the role of music in dveloping communication skills.
We are a school primarily for children with physical impairments but like most special schools in Scotland there has been a gradual change over the last few years in the range of needs of our pupils. We are seeing a growing number of children in the school with communication difficulties whether it be children with no intelligible speech, articulation difficulties, or children with autistic spectrum disorders. Each of these groups of children, of course have different needs and so various approaches have to be adopted in the school to develop their communication skills.

Richard describes the role of ICT in helping students with complex learning difficulties access literacy.

A fascinating question and one that teachers would probably answer with 'more knowledge than we have now!' That alone is reason to share this vast wealth of understanding in the world, and really begin to learn from each other. Knowledge and understanding are not learned in isolation for in collaboration we can achieve much more. Teachers cannot possibly know all the answers to the questions children ask but it is their responsibility to equip learners with the thirst, skills and opportunities to be able to find out - and not simply through a Google search either.

This article explores this approach with Key Stage 1 pupils in a Hampshire infant school.