Thursday, April 22, 2010

PowerPoint as a modelling and teaching tool

I was helping a teacher with ideas of how to integrate ICT into her classroom programme. I asked her what her shared book was and suggested how she could teach 'Shared Book' using the class computer and a group of children. (Read the Shared book with the children first)

  • Start off with a blank page, introduce the shared book, ask what the title is, type the Title in
  • in the sub title box type by Room #
  • Insert a new slide
  • Read the text from the Shared book and then start typing it in
  • ask questions like "What do I need to type first?" "What goes at the end of the sentence?"
  • Computer skills are taught as they are needed i.e. "How do I make a capital letter?" "Who can show me how to type a full stop, what finger should I use?
  • As the book was one about 'I can run, I can draw' etc. The teacher taught the children how to take photos, so these 5 and 6 year olds took their own photos and the teacher inserted them into their PowerPoint. 
  • To finish it off she chose a design template and this was all done as part of the lesson with the children participating alongside.
 All this was part of their shared book learning experience, and put their learning into an integrated, authentic context. They now have this story on the computer as an extra reading activity.

As a follow up to this, students can take photos of other things they 'can' do and add them to this shared book or create an new one.