Rural Shepway Writing Project

The Rural Shepway Year 5 Writing project was an opportunity for pupils to use ICT to gather information and share their learning with others. To encourage these activities all pupils were given access to a wide range of web resources that included web conferencing (FlashMeeting) and blogging. During the project the pupils from Lyminge Primary school took part in three live web conferences and posted over forty questions on the project micro-site blog. Information gathered from these activities was used by the pupils to:

• Plan and sequence their work clearly
• Provide additional information for the reader about characters and events
• Construct complex sentences
• Link paragraphs together

Seventy-eight year 5 pupils from thirteen Rural Shepway primary schools took part. They visited Dymchurch to investigate and learn about ?Dr. Syn and the history of smuggling in Kent.? During the morning the pupils took part in a range of activities led by Ian Coulson (History Advisor) and other ASK staff. These included:

• Who was Dr Syn?
• Eighteenth Century Weapons and Clothing
• Smuggling on the Marsh

After lunch the pupils transferred to Dymchurch Primary school to take part in two workshops on ?Writing an Adventure Story? and ?Creating a Graphic Novel? led by Stewart Ross (Project Author) and Michele Gregson (ASK Art and Design Advisory Teacher.) Based on the morning activities the workshops explored with the pupils how they could use the information gathered back in school to write an adventure story about ?Dr. Syn and Smuggling? and create a cartoon strip about the famous fictional character.
To assess the impact using ICT had improving pupil?s writing it is probably most revealing to read the comments posted by the young learners at the end of the project. These leave no one in any doubt that they enjoyed and benefitted from the opportunity to work online with others and provide a positive endorsement, if one was ever needed, of the role new technologies can perform in assisting pupils to progress and become confident writers.

Rural Shepway Pupils

Links

• Click for full article (5.27MB pdf)

Post Comments