Presenting texts and supporting

writing with ICT in Year 2

The school The pupils

The first school which took part in this project has nearly When assessed at the beginning of the autumn term by a
200 pupils from three to nine years. Almost 60 percent of standardised reading test a number of pupils were achieving
pupils receive free school meals, a figure which has risen below what might be expected for pupils of that age. The
steadily from 34 percent four years ago. A recent OFSTED pupils also completed a ten-minute writing task as part of
report commented that it is a “successful school with many the initial assessments. The amount written was very short
strengths”. Results of standardised tests taken by the with little evidence of awareness of sentence construction,
younger pupils in the school show that a very high reflected in the lack of capital letters and full stops. In
percentage of pupils have low attainment in early reading addition the range of vocabulary was narrow and there was
skills. By the end of Key Stage 1, however, attainment is little descriptive writing. The main connective used was
broadly in line with national expectations. 'and'. Few action statements used any verbs other than 'went'
or ’saw’.
The teacher
The teacher of the Year 2 class which was involved has been
teaching at the school for fourteen years and usually teaches
in Key Stage 1. She is the school’s IT co-ordinator and has
her own computer at home. Before the beginning of the
project she used it to support her work: for example, by
creating worksheets and redrafting the school’s policy
statement for ICT. She developed her own skills through the
support of LEA courses and trying things out on her
computer at home.

"The Education Technology centre runs courses and there is

an IT co-ordinators meeting which I go to every term."

She thinks that ICT is important not just for the skills pupils Two pupils from the class using an alphabetical list to help them with
learn, but for what if offers in other areas. their writing.

"It’s important and getting more important, the way things

The aim of the project
are now. I think it can support other curriculum areas
well."
The aim of this project was:
She is always keen to improve her teaching and sets high
• to develop pupils’ reading and writing skills;
standards for herself as well as her pupils.
• to support the literacy hour with activities incorporating
"I always feel as if there’s something you could do better. I ICT.
don’t think any lesson is ever perfect, is it?"
The focus was decided by the class teacher and her
headteacher.
2 Ways forward with ICT: Developing literacy

"In consultation with the headteacher, we decided we The headteacher in the school was particularly supportive in
would like to concentrate on literacy, with the literacy hour this part of the project by providing some extra time for the
in mind. We’ve had problems achieving good results in teacher to work with him, and with the project staff, to learn
writing, so we thought we would like to improve the how to use the program. In addition, the teacher had access
children's writing..." to a computer outside of school to work on the presentations.

The teacher’s choices Developing writing skills and ICT

The aims of the project were to be achieved in two ways. The
skills
first was through supporting the pupils’ writing. The teacher The teacher arranged for the class to make two visits to
chose to use Clicker (Crick Software) to support the pupils’ clusters of computers, as she has only one computer available
reading and writing skills. This was particularly to take to her class all of the time.
advantage of the speech feedback in Clicker combined with a
talking word processor (Talking First Word/Microsoft). This
supported their word recognition skills through the word
grids when the pupils were composing text. The talking
word processor also helped them to re-read and improve
their writing.

The pupils drafted writing at the computer with the support

of the word grid which spoke the words selected and
inserted them into the word processing program. The reason
for this was that the teacher wanted to help their writing
composition through shared and guided writing activities.
The word grid provided structure through the words the
teacher chose to place in the grid to support the pupils’
Two pupils from the class learning how to use the word grid with a
writing. Speech feedback from the word processor supported
word processor at the University.
pupils in re-reading their own writing for sense and
punctuation.
On the first occasion this was to introduce and practise the
skills needed to use the writing software. This was partly so
The second aim of the project was for the teacher to use ICT
that they would be able to achieve the English objectives in
to support her work with the whole class in presenting and
literacy lessons, and so that she could focus on teaching
sharing texts, and in teaching whole-class word level work.
another group of pupils. In addition, she arranged for other
adult support to be available in the early part of the term to
The teacher decided to use the computer to present texts to
consolidate their skills in writing with the computer when
the class in the whole-class teaching and plenary phases of
they were back in the classroom. Again, this was to ensure
the lesson. She used presentation software (Powerpoint /
that pupils learnt the ICT skills they needed so that they
Microsoft Office) to help the pupils identify the appropriate
could focus on the literacy objectives.
common spelling patterns for vowel phonemes in texts, as
well as to teach specific word endings and for some word
The first visit was to a cluster at the local University where
level revision work. To do this she used slides to present
pupils were introduced to the word grid program and each
stories. At the end of these presentations she added some
produced a short piece of writing about themselves and their
extra slides to teach or to revise some word level work which
school. Back at school the pupils had further adult support
she had identified that the pupils needed. The feature of the
in class with writing at the computer to consolidate the skills
program which enabled the teacher to present word endings,
they needed to work independently.
such as ‘-ing’ or ‘-ed’, by having them move across the
screen to make new words, was particularly helpful in
focusing pupils’ attention.

Effective pedagogy using ICT in literacy and numeracy in primary schools

 Ways forward with ICT: Developing literacy 3

The second class visit to the LEA Education Technology

The results from the standardised
centre was about half way through the term. The purpose of
tests and writing activity
this visit was to develop an extended piece of writing about
a story which was presented to the class using presentation The initial reading test showed that pupils’ scores were
software. The talking word processor ‘read’ a passage to the below expectations for their age. After two months of work,
whole-class and the pupils identified words which the the pupils’ reading ages had improved by an average of
computer "could not read properly". They also decided almost seven months. The repeat of the writing task also
where they thought punctuation should be placed in a showed significant gains in the amount that the pupils wrote
prepared passage from the text. The Education Technology (on paper), and an improvement in punctuation and elements
centre had the facilities to present the text using a television of the story structure, such as the use of connectives.
screen so the pupils could see it easily and for all of the
pupils to work on their writing immediately afterwards on These improvements suggest that carefully planned and
the computers which were available. structured ICT activities can be part of an approach which
improves pupils’ reading and writing skills. The teacher used
In the writing session which followed, the pupils used the the ICT activities as part of her broader literacy teaching,
speech facility on the computer they were using to listen to and was keen to integrate the activities into the literacy hour
their stories as they re-read what they had written. The where this was possible. The improvement suggests that this
pupils were also given an alphabetical dictionary mat for approach was successful.
their writing which had been created from the presentation.
This was a piece of A4 paper which had been prepared by Developing this approach
saving the presentation as a text file and sorting the text In developing this approach in the following term, a group of
alphabetically. Pupils referred to the dictionary mat to help pupils used Powerpoint to create their own book which was
them spell words correctly which were not included in the then presented to the class. They used a story setting from
word grid on screen. their reading and re-described the events and added their
own illustrations. The printing options within the program
Presenting texts enabled an A4 sized class book and mini versions (using the
After this visit to the LEA Centre, the teacher prepared 6 slides per page printing option) to be produced easily. A
another story to present to pupils back in school. The head few examples of word level work for revision were included
teacher uses a laptop connected to a TV monitor to make in the final slides of the presentation and were clearly
presentations to parents and governors. A computer based in enjoyed by the pupils.
the school’s library was also positioned so that the whole
class could see and read from the screen together.

The title slide from the pupils’ presentation.

The teacher presenting a text to the class using Powerpoint.

Effective pedagogy using ICT in literacy and numeracy in primary schools

4 Ways forward with ICT: Developing literacy

Pupils also benefited from the interactivity which the speech

Future plans
feedback offered them. Their selection of words in the grid
The teacher is keen to extend her knowledge of the was confirmed or corrected through this feedback. Similarly,
capabilities of the word grid program, such as the facility to the computer’s ability to ‘read’ their writing so they could
have linked grids, and plans to attend a course at the improve it was an aspect of this interactivity.
Educational Technology Centre to extend her knowledge and
skills in this area. Developing Powerpoint presentations of Summary
whole stories is time consuming and whilst it has clear
benefits the teacher felt that it was something she could The teacher was able to use ICT effectively to support the
develop on a termly rather than weekly basis. development of pupils’ reading and writing skills. This was
specifically to help them develop redrafting skills using
"They certainly enjoyed it, and it was a different means of speech feedback, and in using presentation software to read
presenting the book to the children, but it did take a lot of a text to the whole class. These activities were incorporated
time to produce." into literacy lessons. However, the teacher ensured that
pupils had opportunities to develop the IT skills that they
She felt that developing word and sentence level work with needed in the visits to the computer cluster. In addition,
the presentation slides would be more practical for routine using ICT enabled her to develop other resources for groups
use. Presenting the pupils’ work and developing guided of pupils to use away from the computer. Her ICT skills
writing on screen is another option which the teacher enabled her to make decisions about how she could use ICT
thought could be pursued. effectively in her preparation and in her teaching.

Features of ICT Further reading

The teacher took advantage of some of the features of ICT for Hartas, C. and Moseley, D. (1993) ‘Say that again please: a
her own benefit and recognised the development in her own scheme to boost reading skills using a computer with
skills and confidence. She identified some particular skills digitised speech’ Support for Learning Vol 8, No 1 pp 16-20
which she had been able to use in her teaching:
A section of the Teacher Training Agency’s Needs
"Adjusting page layout and printing, because when we were Assessment materials for Key Stage 2 teachers ‘Assessing your
using the scanner and Powerpoint, there was the chance to needs in Literacy’ looks at Grammar and Punctuation and is
change things around and present them in different ways. available both in booklet form as well as on CD rom (TTA tel:
Saving text and images to use in other software packages, 0845 6060323).
too, I was really proud when I did that. I had to go and
show everybody."

This reflects some aspects of the capacity and range of ICT

which allows teachers to present text in a variety of forms
and allows text and images to be combined easily. In this
situation, the presentation software also had the capacity to
present information on screen or in a variety of printed
formats, as well as exporting the text to a word processor.

Saving the text from the presentation to print out Pupils checking their writing with speech feedback
alphabetical lists for the pupils to use in their writing or from the computer.
cloze passages for group activities is part of a further
function of provisionality which the teacher exploited. The
pupils made use of this function of ICT when they redrafted
and improved their writing at the computer.

Effective pedagogy using ICT in literacy and numeracy in primary schools