Part 2:
Teaching With ICT

a. Structuring Lessons

In the case study we are dealing with, the teacher has a fairly regular pattern to her sessions. She tends to start with a teacher-led introduction to the topic, outlining the area for coverage in the session. In an hour-long lesson, she will restrict herself to one task such as carrying out a search and discussing findings, inputting text, finding relevant pictures or creating some order to the document the learners are working on. This work is structured, and she monitors progress around the class until she can get them to report back to the whole group on their progress, or summarise their progress in small groups to feedback in the next session.

Again, you might not work in exactly this way, but you probably do have a pattern that you favour as a teacher. Characterise this pattern to yourself now, and consider how the use of ICT as a resource might fit into it.

Over something like a two week period, spending 3-4 hours a week on the activity the teacher is confident that the pupils have the necessary skills to carry out the tasks with support from herself and the classroom assistant. She divides the time between intensive ICT work in the computer room and literacy preparation work in the classroom. First let's recall the main learning objectives the teacher has for her pupils in this area:

• Provide personal accounts of the chosen newspaper article.
• Support the text with relevant graphics/symbols.
• Produce headlines using distinguishable text.
• Compile all the stories to make a form of newspaper.

Below is a summary of how sessions one to eight are structured to use ICT to meet these objectives. Each session starts with a class introduction and the learners are assigned to their tasks for the session. At the end of each session there is a class discussion on the activities carried out and feedback given to the learners from the teachers observations Take a look at this summary and then produce your own account, and your own lesson plans, showing how you would use the ICT resources we have been discussing to do the same job on the topics. You might wish to extend or contract the time, and to fit the plans, duration and work around your own experience of working with this type of activity.

Case Study Lesson Structure

Session 1 - Investigation of newspaper web pages.

• Introduce the study to be carried out and the method of producing a group newspaper at the end of the task. Students to:
  • Practise inputing web addresses into the address box to access different newspaper web sites.
  • Discuss the findings of the different sites.
  • Print articles and pictures of interest.
  • Paste pictures into Word documents where appropriate.

Session 2 - Selecting ICT resources.

• Discuss the activities carried out in the previous session. Students to:
  • Access the newspapers web pages.
  • Select the most appropriate pages to use.
  • Identify an article and discuss the story line with others.
  • Copy pictures from the article and save in a file.
  • Print a copy of the article.

Session 3 - Using printed newspapers.

• These papers need to be purchased on the same day that the students investigated the web pages in the previous session. Students to:
  • Find articles from different newspapers relating to the story selected.
  • Obtain different versions of the articles from different newspapers.
  • Discuss the contents of the stories with others.

Session 4 - Graphics search.

• Introduce the need to support the story with graphics. Students to:
  • Identify keywords that can be used to search for relevant graphics.
  • Carry out a search § Input findings into a Word file.

Session 5 - Word processing.

• Discuss the content of stories and establish the need to use past tense. Students to:
  • Word-process text relevant to the account.
  • Use text boxes (where appropriate) to change the shape of text layout.

Session 6 - Creating headlines.

• Discuss the need for headings and the distinctive role that they play. Students to:
  • Choose a text font to use.
  • Type in keywords relating to the story.
  • Change the text font.
  • Discuss the outcomes.
  • Choose the best option.

Session 7 - Article layout.

• Introduce the different forms of layout and shape of articles from a variety of newspapers. Students to:
  • Decide on a layout with the text and appropriate graphics/pictures.
  • Print out the article.
  • Discuss layout with others.
  • Make relevant changes.

Session 8 - Group work.

• Discuss the need to gather all the information together to produce a final product. Students to:
  • Create an order to the number of different stories produced.
  • Number the pages and create a newspaper format.
  • Evaluate the findings of the task.
  • Word-process the individual activity carried out and evaluate role as a member of a team.

b. Managing Learning in the Classroom