Yr+7and8+Literacy+Ideas

Midsummer Night's Dream Wiki This is a high school wiki built to help students explore themes and characters of the play.

[|Create a big book for junior classrooms] The example on this page was made using Frontpage and is very basic but you could do the same thing in any webpage software. You then just need to put the html files on your server for the younger classes to access.

[|Shape Poems] Use the computer to draw images to enhance poems.

[|Google Docs Activity for Educators] A lesson plan and ideas on how to use Google Docs for collaborative writing and re-working writing.

There is a great example of how to use Google Docs in combination with Skype to develop writing. You can read about it on two teachers blogs that were involved in the project. [|Lisa's Lingo blog] and [|Learning is Messy Blog.]
 * Skype and Google Docs**

We created an animated advertisement for a useless product. We first created a Jingle then drew the animation and took photos of it. Finally we compiled it together in iMovie. It was fully integrated into our poetry and inquiry unit making the learning more meaningful. The students learnt the process of animation while learning about how to effectively advertise.
 * Multimedia to Explore Advertising**

We created a mixed media show which integrated with the poetry unit. The kids wrote a poem as a group- took photos- created soundscapes and slideshows.
 * Presentations for Poetry**

Curriculum Vitae's have been popular with students - they are exploring lots of layout and visual effectiveness. You can also take about appropriate writing tone and style.
 * Curriculum Vitae**

[|ICT Applications in Literacy] This has a large number of ideas on how to incorporate ICT into literacy organised by objectives and strand.

[|NGfL Literacy Ideas] Almost all of the ideas in this list have an ICT component.

This is a way of taking comic writing up to the next level. Kids could either draw the panels and take photos of them to add to Comic Life or use purely photos to tell the story. The [|HowToons website] has more examples like the one included below.
 * Comic Life Instructions with Storyline**

We created an animated advertisement for a useless product. We originally created a visual (poster) advertisement of a useless product based on a Ren and Stimpy sketch "The Log" that we watched. Then as part of a literacy unit on poetry we were studying we created a Jingle that would sell it and recorded it on Garageband. During this process the students created pictures which would later become our animation. Finally we compiled it together in iMovie. It was fully integrated into our poetry and inquiry unit making the learning more meaningful. The students learnt the process of animation while learning about how to effectively advertise. Here are a few examples: media type="google" key="-3882549672462928111&hl=en" width="400" height="326"media type="google" key="-9131985367713393740&hl=en" width="400" height="326" media type="google" key="8515556963693397433&hl=en" width="400" height="326"
 * Creating Animations using iMovie**

[|Teaching Children to be Discerning About Web Information] This video from Teacher TV shows an 'experiment' with Year 9 in the Uk where they were given some websites to use as part of a research topic and they accepted them at face value despite the content being untrue or borderline. If you click on 'Resources', it provides all of the links used as well as a downloadable lesson plan. You need a free account with Teacher TV to view.

Using keynote we put together informative slides with hyperlinks to websites and other pages. The kids loved it. We had a map of New Zealand with clickable areas that would take you to slides about that area. We also added hyperlinks to external sites that could be clicked on in the presentation.
 * Keynote for Presenting Topic Material**

VoiceThread Ideas media type="custom" key="585923" ||  || [|ICT Applications in Literacy] This has a large number of ideas on how to incorporate ICT into literacy organised by objectives and strand.
 * Talking about Imagary

[|NGfL Literacy Ideas] Almost all of the ideas in this list have an ICT component.