English

While I was training to become a teacher the National Literacy Strategy was introduced throughout England and Wales.

In English I have devised a range of activities, one of my favourites being to do with persuasive writing. Once the children have studied what makes a good advert I set them the task of writing an advert for the Teacher Training Agency that could be played on the radio, thereby adding speaking and listening skills into the lesson. I have done this with two classes now and have had some amazing results from the Teaching Bud which is 'out to get you' to one that was made to the tune of Eastenders.

The Teaching Bug Radio advert as created by two Year 6 children in July 2001. This file will take a few minutes to download (around three and a half on a 56k modem), please be patient as it is well worth it. The link will also enable you to view the information that the children were given to help them in their task.

When I was working with a Year 5 class on non-fiction texts I got them to put together some talks based on a range of topics. Some children were able to use PowerPoint linked up to the schools new multimedia projector while others used large photocopies or the OHP by drawing on transparency sheets. The following paragraph is what the children wrote about the talks for their website.

The first thing we did was to plan our talks on Pharaohs, Gods, Mummification, Space and the Moon or Transport. We then found pictures for our talks, from books or the computer and wrote something about our pictures. We used the overhead projector or the computer projector. If we used the computer projector we had to load our pictures on to the computer or, if we had the overhead projector, we had to draw the pictures on acetate sheets. When we did our talks everybody liked them and we had to answer one question each. We decided to spend one of our lunchtimes in to do it and if you add it up it come to 4 hours and that's before we gave the talk so it was worth it, as it was really good and we were proud of the work we had done. The picture shows one of the groups using the computer projector. We were the first class to get to use it, which made us really proud.