Sebastian Swan in the Year 1 Literacy Hour |
| Jan Armishaw , Beaver Green Infant School, Ashford |
| Introduction
I began with Sebastian Swan's book The Swan Story. Unfortunately, at the time we were experiencing great difficulties in connecting to the Internet. I copied The Swan Story into Microsoft Word, including the pictures. I printed the pages and had them professionally enlarged for a very reasonable price. I was able to do the A3 laminating at school. The hard copy is an excellent Big Book resource for the Literacy Hour if one is unable to get on line, and the children love reading the book. I have used this method to reproduce In the Autumn, Sebastian's Waddle and the cvc book Sebastian's Rhyme. These books are an excellent non-fiction resource with beautiful photographs and sound effects, as well as interesting texts. They inspire wonderful follow up work. I have based whole class assemblies on these books. Children have written their own non-fiction books based on exploring the school grounds. My class read Sebastian's Waddle and afterwards went for a walk around the school grounds. It was surprising how much the class noticed . "We walked to the woods. We saw long yellow things hanging from the tree. What can they be? They were hazel catkins, like caterpillars." They called their book Signs of Spring Walk, using the same style as Sebastian's Waddle.
In the Autumn Term, our Science topics were Our Senses and Sound. We made it fun by going on various 'senses' walks in the school grounds. The children noticed, heard and smelt a lot!! The cvc Rhyme book has inspired the children to write their own rhyme book and illustrate it using the Colour Magic program. A good way to reward the children when they have been on line is to give them a Sebastian Swan label. Do this by following the Literacy Link Reward Stickers instructions, which are very clear. It's easy to make Literacy Hour signs in Publisher 98. I selected the Sign wizard, and followed more or less the same procedure as when making the stickers. Examples of labels are: Our work with Sebastian Swan gave me the idea of writing my own books. I wrote a simple story based on the "Tom and Jill" vocabulary. With the help of my computer literate classroom assistant, children wrote their own ending to the story and illustrated it.
In the Literacy Hour we do lots of flash card and phoneme work using laptops. Children benefit from illustrating their own work, using Talking First Word (they can write their name and captions using "draw") or Colour Magic. This is an encouraging way for children to improve their fine motor skills. If you want to make a Big Book, children can draw in black and white using Colour Magic. After the printed copy has been enlarged, they can colour it in. We have used this method to retell well-known stories, and to write children's own version of stories, for example Goldilocks and The Three Bears, The King's Socks, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Train Trip and others. For this work, each group had a 20 minute slot in the Literacy Hour throughout the week. Once the story has been written in a talking word processor, it may be shared with the group, or with the whole class, using a large display. In a one-to-one setting, adult and child may read the story together. The child may then read the story with support provided by the computer. This builds confidence as the child begins to read independently. The Literacy Hour provides opportunities to teach ICT skills. Take advantage of a non-fiction slot which includes writing instructions, letter writing, dictionary work etc. For example, we discussed different ways of sending messages - writing a letter, using the phone, sending a fax and sending an email. I talked through the process of sending an email, demonstrating the different stages. Children wrote to Sebastian, and some of their letters may be seen on the pin board. Having a data projector is an advantage as it is an excellent resource for whole class teaching. A child in my class summed it up by saying, "It's better than going to the pictures!" Useful strategies
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