kathleen.johnston

As I am mentoring a probationer this year I do not have a class full time. With this in mind our staff thought about how we could make best use of my time. Last year I covered McCrone hours and during that time I taught ICT. However, this meant that class teachers were leaving new pieces of software and hardware for me to try out and they were not having a go in class themselves. We were also concerned that ICT was being regarded by the children as something to do just when Mrs Johnston came in  – not as a valuable learning and teaching tool. So we came up with a wee plan to address these issues this year. On a Tuesday I team teach ICT with each teacher in her class. This week I met with each teacher to decide which strand within 5-14 ICT to use as our main emphasis and then looked at the main features contained within that strand. We then created a forward plan which covered the ICT skills yet also contributed to lessons spread over a variety of curricular areas. It sounds complicated, but it isn’t   – for example, P3/4 are doing a topic on Flat Stanley, and we decided that communicating and collaborating was a sitter for this topic. The class teacher and I have created a series of really exciting activities for the children – and the teacher will be learning how to use some of the ICT skills too with my support. We plan to fax and email Stanley and compare with snail mail. We also intend to video conference with Bowmore to see Stanley at Bowmore Primary, on his holiday! The children are taking Stanley home and writing diary entries about their adventures with Stanley – he was bramble picking last night and going to the fair tonight! The class have started up a blog and the children are entering their diary entries as posts on the blog. So you can see that all the main features within communicating and collaborating are being covered and overtaken and the class and teacher are experiencing ICT at its very best – as a learning and teaching tool. The way we have designed the forward plan template, there will be a balance of ICT skills covered every session. If you want a wee look at our forward plan templates for ICT, I’m happy to send them to you – just send me an email. I know its not ground breaking stuff, but it seems to be working for us.