ICT Year 6: Creating Electronic Big Books

The Direct2U service was a weekly email subscription service for primary teachers from Becta, which ran during 2005/6. The scheme offered lesson plans featuring ICT in activities based on six subject strands. The service has now been discontinued but Becta have given us permission to use a selection from the plans in this magazine. A full archive of all the Direct2U activities can be found at http://forum.ngfl.gov.uk/direct2u

Introduction

In this activity, children work in small groups to design and create an electronic Big Book for the younger children in the school. They will take into account the reading age and interests of younger children and the format of Big Books, and test out their books and modify them if necessary. There is not room here to give full details of how to use Big Book Maker but it is well supported with manuals and guides http://primary.naace.co.uk/activities/BigBookMaker/

Fortunately, many organisations offer support to teachers and other professionals working in education, through their websites. Jim Merrett reviews some useful ones.

In this article Angella Streluk explains some of the features of control work and suggests ways in which D&T and control can be integrated into topic work on the theme of 'homes and habitats'.

Becta produced ideas and activities using ICT across the curriculum. These can be found at http://forum.ngfl.gov.uk/direct2u
This article reproduces three of the Direct2U activities. The first is a D&T task for Year 1. This is followed by two Art & Design activities, one for Year 1 and the other for Year 2.

In this article Glenys Hart summarises the content of some of the Regional Broadband Consortia's individual grids for learning with reference to Art and Design and Design and Technology.