Promoting Effective Practice of ICT in English – a primary school case study

Year 2 pupils were encouraged to develop an extended piece of writing about a story which was presented using presentation software. The talking word processor ‘read’ a passage and the pupils identified words which the computer ‘could not read properly’. They also decided where they thought punctuation should be placed in a prepared passage from the text. In the writing session that followed, the pupils used the speech facility on the computer to listen to their stories as they re-read what they had written. After two months’ work, the pupils’ reading ages had improved by an average of almost seven months. The writing task also showed significant gains in the amount that the pupils wrote (on paper), and an improvement in punctuation and elements of the story structure, such as the use of connectives. The teacher was able to use ICT effectively to help them to develop redrafting skills using speech feedback and in using presentation software to read a text to the whole class. However, she ensured that pupils had opportunities to develop their ICT skills and using ICT enabled her to develop other resources for groups of pupils to use away from the computer. Her ICT skills enabled her to make decisions about how she could use ICT effectively in her preparation and in her teaching. She successfully used the ICT activities as part of her broader literacy teaching. (Moseley et al., 1999).