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/

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

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

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.

Lydia Johnson describes how she used Windows Movie Maker with her Year 5 pupils to motivate learning across the curriculum.

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.

Colin Hill is a KS1 ICT coordinator in Southport.
In this article he describes a small scale project to investigate the impact of ICT on the performance of children with literacy difficulties.

This article won the Chris Robson Memorial Prize 2004, having appeared in Primary Focus on New Literacies. Tracey describes how she used the digital camera with Year 1 children to create movies supporting work in drama and literacy.