spelling city is fab

Just to thank you guys for the CPD - I am actively using spellingcity.com - it has been a great boost especially for the less able.

Am going to try and create a BLOG for the school - watch this space.

Poetry and iMovie

My Primary 4 class used SCRAN images to illustrate their rendition of J.K. Annand's Street Talk

Convert and download videos from popular websites without installing any software or downloading scripts to your PC. This is not just a service that allows for download of videos but you can save those videos in most formats available today, including MP4 for IPOD.

http://www.videocodezone.com/conversion.php

Welcome!

Welcome to Lucy and Diarmid's ICT Tips and Tricks in Literacy and English Language.

Our intention is to present you with some tips and tricks that work for us with pupils and staff.

Success Criteria: we will be very pleased if even a few of these catch your imagination and are taken back to your own school and children.

We also hope that you will consider accessing this blog later and adding your own tips and tricks.

Rubistar Rubrics in AIFL

Register for free with Rubistar.

Rubistar

Podcasting

Diarmid will share how he has used podcasting with his pupils.

Blogging

The term 'blogging' comes from 'weblogging' where content can be added like James T. Kirk's Captain's Log. A flexible and motivating tool for pupils, and of great use for communication - with pupils, parents, teachers and the wider world - because of its speed and accessibility.

WordPress and Blogger offer free blogging tools.

Note: search for images of toys on behalf of children. Only forenames were used and parents were informed beforehand.
P3 Toys Blog
Blogging is a useful tool at the end of topic: "What I have learned about the Romans."
P4 Romans Blog
Add a link to a blog on your school website to allow quick, easy updates from a number of users.
School Bulletin
Parents can maintain their own website quickly and easily using a blog.
School Council Blog
The first time we did this we were wary of using any photographs. Wendy French worked with P7 pupils to peer assess pupils' posts.
Lagganlia 06
Photographs of groups are published here and only forenames are used.
Lagganlia 07
We now seek parental permission to publish pupil photographs on the web as part of general permission slips at the start of the year.
Lagganlia 08

Google Docs

Web 2.0 is a term meaning that Version 2 of the Internet is active, rather than passive. Users can now not only access and view content, they can create it too.

There are many online tools which enable collaborative learning and Diarmid will explain how he has used Google Docs with his children.

http://docs.google.com

Spelling

Try out this wonderful - free - spelling website. Compile and publish lists for your pupils which they can access online.

http://www.spellingcity.com/

YouTube - War of the Worlds

YouTube offers a wealth of multimedia resources for teaching and learning. Bandwith can be problematic so Diarmid will demonstrate a way to download content so it can be accessed offline.

Consider using this animated version of Jeff Wayne's "War of the Worlds" as a stimulus for writing a newspaper report:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eyWReM986gw&feature=related

Before beginning to write, pupils could take part in a 'Hot Seat' drama session, where they sit in the hot seat in role as an eye witness and are then interviewed by members of the press (for example "Joe Blogg, Daily Mail. What did you see land on Horsell Common?")

Poetry

Diarmid will share how his pupils have narrated poetry using iMovie and Lucy will show how to narrate a poem in PowerPoint.


At Sciennes in P6, our pupils focus on Performance poetry as part of our school-wide Language Programme of Study. You might consider using YouTube to source some multimedia versions of poems.

WH Auden "The Night Mail"
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=dYtgmLdDkg0&feature=related

Alfred Noyes "The Highwayman"
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1OVqAANwJE&feature=related
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=dYtgmLdDkg0&feature=related


Performance Poetry
Pupils could create an additional verse, changing font to follow on in the style of Roger Stevens' calligram poem "Louder."

Louder !

Okay, Andrew, nice and clearly
off you go

Welcome everybody to our school concert...

Louder, please, Andrew. Mums and dads won't hear you at the back, will they?

Welcome everybody to our school concert...

Louder, Andrew. You're not trying.
Pro -
ject -
your -
voice.

Take a b i g b r e a t h and

louder !

Welcome everybody to our school concert...

For goodness sake, Andrew. LOUDER ! LOUDER !

Welcome everybody to our school concert
Now, Andrew, there's no need to be silly.

http://www.poetryzone.ndirect.co.uk/howto.htm

Animations

Diarmid has some example animations he has produced with children at Davidson's Mains.

Nokias

Each of our 90 P7 pupils at Sciennes has an individual handheld computer as part of the two year Learning Hubs pilot project. Please feel welcome to explore.

Shoo-Fly and Infant Video Toolkit

Please feel welcome to browse through this wonderful, expansive cross-curricular P6-S2 resource, available in Smart, Promethean, PowerPoint and pdf formats. It marries very well with Curriculum for Excellence.
http://www.shooflypublishing.co.uk/

Infant Video Toolkit is software we use with pupils from P1-P7 and at around £425 for a site licence is the single best investment in a piece of software we have ever made.
http://www.2simpleshop.com/