ICT in SBT 1

Now that I have completed my first school placement, I can see clearly how difficult it can be to teach and use ICT in a Key Stage 1 classroom. The resources available in your school, and the time you are allowed to access these determines how engaging and productive the ICT is in your classroom.

Here are some reflections on the ICT I have seen, and implemented in my time at school.

ICT Lessons

Most of the ICT lessons that I have since seen in my school have consisted of very basic tasks, where children are quickly expected to produce some kind of evidence of learning. One session they were asked to draw a picture of a famous person in Dazzle. Although I cannot really see how this might develop the children’s ICT skills, I can sympathise with a teacher who sets these kinds of tasks. The children are simply not at the level that they need to be in order to complete many of the more challenging tasks in the ICT suite.

I only taught one ICT lesson by myself during my placement. This lesson was very short, and the class teacher wanted the children to explore using a word processor. I asked the children to type up some sentences about a famous person who they had been learning about. I gave them the sentences to copy, so that they didn’t spend the whole session thinking about what to type, but actually typing. They then played around with changing the size, font, and colour of their sentences. This was fine, but I still felt that the children didn’t make much progress at all, and I know that some of them didn’t get a go at all.

I struggled to think of an activity which children with such little experience on computers could do in such a short time frame. Thinking back, I now wonder if the mixed ability pairs (one year 1, and one year 2) was not the best way to organise the children. Separate tasks for the different year groups might work better and might allow all of the children to work on a task that is suited more realistically to them.

ICT in my teaching

I definitely feel more confident in using ICT to improve the quality of my teaching. I have witnessed the sudden difference in behaviour when some element of technology is being used in an input. I have shown children a website as a starting point in a few of my topic lessons (Beatrix Potter - peterrabbit.com, Christopher Columbus – BBC Website, Big Ben – Big Ben website). If ever I have used a video or some pictures from the internet to inspire the children they seem to automatically concentrate harder, and they become more interested.

One major problem I have experienced with this however is that many websites are blocked by the Hampshire child protection software. I can completely understand that this needs to be in place, however it is frustrating when you cannot search on google images, or use videos from youtube.

I have also attempted to integrate ICT into other subject lessons. I was shown an interactive phonics programme to use on the Interactive Whiteboard with the children. This allowed them to listen to the words being sounded out properly, and they can then talk along with the computer. This activity provided an opportunity to vary the teaching method during the phonics sessions, making the learning more interesting for the children. It also made sure that the children were pronouncing the sounds correctly, and that the teacher couldn’t accidentally pronounce the sounds incorrectly.

In one of my final sessions at the school, the children were making up their own famous people in a topic session which was incorporating art, literacy and drama in one morning session. I thought it would add a fun touch to the lesson if we took photos of the children so that we could print them out and stick the photo of their own faces onto their paintings. Although the ICT element of this task was not something that allowed the children to develop their own skills, it certainly encouraged them to think about their work carefully. They were also very excited about seeing the finished work.

I saw another great use of digital cameras in a maths lesson, taken by a Maths advisor. The children were sorting shapes in maths, and then laid them out on the tables, before taking photos of their work. This was great as it allowed the children to spend their precious time actually developing their maths skills, not writing their results down (which often takes the longest time!). I think that this use of technology in the classroom is a really positive change, and will allow children to focus their time on the learning that they actually need to do. As long as the evidence is used and not left on the memory stick, I can see how this way of working could allow teachers to be more creative with the tasks that they set in all subjects.

This placement has enabled me to develop my own ICT skills to improve my teaching. However I still do not feel confident in teaching young children (KS1) ICT. I look forward to teaching in KS2 where the children may be more independent when working on the computers. However the success of ICT lessons really does depend on the resources available and the time dedicated to ICT in the school week.

I hope that in my next placement I will be able to use ICT to enable children to develop their work in all subject areas, as well as teach some exciting and valuable ICT lessons.