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/

Focus: Big Books

This is a special edition of Sharing Success which looks at the Big Books on the Naace Primary website and the Big Book Maker utility which allows you to make similar books of your own. We are delighted to announce that there is a new and much improved Big Book Maker available from amongst the Naace Primary resources at http://primary.naace.co.uk/activities/index.htm

If you feel that you could make a contribution to Sharing Success please contact me at h.govier@btopenworld.com.

Focus: Summertime Special

This summertime special issue of Sharing Success is a set of activities appropriate to the last few weeks of the summer term. These include a piece by Doug Dickinson offering an art activity suitable for most age groups and a reprise of the summer activities published in Week 26 of the Direct2U scheme in 2005. The third article (which is not available in the pdf) is a collection of holiday photographs for use in the Y3 D2U activity - Make a postcard.

If you feel that you could make a contribution to Sharing Success please contact me at h.govier@btopenworld.com.

In this Article, Christy outlines how ICT may be used to help teachers ensure that lessons on 'world writing' are successful. It provides a review of the range of resources available from BBC Active designed for use on a whiteboard, supporting whole-class teaching.

This Article looks at the Big Books on the Naace Primary website and the Big Book Maker utility which allows you to make similar books of your own. A new and much improved Big Book Maker is available from amongst the Naace Primary resources at http://primary.naace.co.uk/activities/index.htm
Full instructions for making the books are available on the site but I wanted to show you some of what is already available in order to illustrate the kind of thing you and your children might create and also to show how the existing books can be useful across the whole curriculum.
For comment or contributions, including any Big Books created by you or your pupils, please contact me at h.govier@btopenworld.com

Bridget Patel was awarded the Bill Tagg Bursary in 2004/05.
This case study focuses on the learner's experience of school-based educational multimedia in the context of their literacy development in an increasingly mulitmodal (the use of multiple modes of communication) world of communication. It explores the uses of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) with which Year 2 children participate in a 'typical' school day, during English and ICT lessons; and furthermore how children's perceptions of ICT are rendered in their on and off-screen work. Literacy (in the traditional and 'techno' senses), creativity and multimodality are key concepts. At a time when communication is shifting to the degree that warrants a revisiting of the English curriculum and the drawing up of policy guidance on digital content quality the relevance of rich, deeply detailed pupil data and pupil consultation is greatly significant.

Imagine a world where schoolchildren are contacting pupils in schools around the world through a totally safe, virtual environment, chatting about differences, sharing pictures, and posting opinions about stories they've read and written. Their teachers are making sure skills in literacy, numeracy, ICT and communication are being improved. The children are sharing ideas about how to live more healthy lifestyles. This Article illustrates how some of this is possible through the 101+ Club Project, supported by by the Oracle Education Foundation.

This paper is not about 'the Literacy Hour' - teachers have got this well sorted. If anything, it is a plea to move on. Many years ago, when working in Special Education carved upon every part of my psyche were the penetrating words of my Headteacher, "Every lesson is a speech and language lesson." So, too, Literacy Skills, in their broadest sense, should be an integral part of every lesson if not a mandatory part of every school's mission statement. The title, therefore, demands more than a cursory nod of approval.