The Netcast Literacy Project originated as an offshoot of County Inset entitled "Where Have All the Readers Gone?". I was one of the members of this working party in its early stages, set up by Phil Jackson, the county English Adviser. He came into school to work with some Year 8 classes and the "What's on a Page?" format stemmed from there. The template for the work came from Mike Auckland who was based in Baglan. Since then, the project has grown considerably. This year, Norman Dawkin, a colleague who is a core IT teacher has "adopted" the work to use as the KS3 DTP unit, using Microsoft Publisher 98, and the project has really taken off. IT is taught as a core lesson in one hour per fortnight. We begin in English with the choosing and the reading of the books, then paired work on an A3 writing frame brainstorming and trying out ideas. This is then transferred to a publisher template on the Net during their IT lessons. The children have gained a great deal from the project, as is borne out in their evaluations. In language terms, I have seen the interaction of speaking, listening reading and writing, wider reading in its truest sense, and use of a number of other Key Skills. In IT, the quality of the finished work has been superb, and the level of pupil expertise has risen considerably. As a cross-curricular initiative, the rewards in terms of pupil response and achievement speak for themselves, and we as teachers have learned a great deal from the experience. We hope to continue the project with future Year 8 classes. We look forward to seeing the pupils' work in its final stage, as a page on the Web site, and we are grateful to John Mills for his work on this. Judith
Rose |
|||
 |
|
||
