Free technology for your school whilst meeting KS2 learning objectives

Rory Dixon is a year 5 classroom teacher and computing lead at Hesketh with Becconsall All Saints C of E Primary School and has been a Promethean Advocate since 2016.

With his wealth of pedagogical experience, Rory is constantly striving to incorporate education technology into the classroom. The following article outlines suggestions for incorporating an application for the Promethean Grant, which could win your school a free Promethean ActivPanel worth around £3,000, whilst meeting learning objectives.

When we first entered the Promethean Grant, our goal was primarily to win ourselves some technology for the school. Our secondary goal, whilst we work and learn in such an inclusive curriculum, was to hit learning objectives by drawing on multiple strands of the curriculum and combining them into one project.

For English and Computing at KS2 level we found that we could complete the following objectives: prepare poems and play scripts to read aloud and perform, showing understanding through intonation, tone, volume and action so the meaning is clear to an audience.

• Identify the audience and purpose
• Select the appropriate language and structures

Performing

• Use appropriate intonation and volume
• Add movement
• Ensure meaning is clear
• Select, use and combine a range of software and use a wider range of devices to create a variety of digital assets such as programs, systems, databases, spreadsheets and multimedia content for a defined purpose

We met these objectives by ensuring that there was a process to the project. The children had to evaluate current short films that had a persuasive purpose.

The children planned their movie using a storyboard, ensuring that they were thinking of the purpose and audience.

Once filming commenced children had the opportunity to be filmed by a parent, working as a camera operator, which consequently gave other pupils hands on experiences of producing and directing the sequences. Empowering the pupils to find effective shots and create drama in the editing process really gave the experience credence with the pupils.

Finally, to encourage a collaborative learning experience using software, the children used Garageband to create a piece of music to accompany their work and added it into iMovie during the editing process.

The final tweaks were then made by adding text, cutting scenes, incorporating animations, adding music and altering the speed when appropriate.

The children evaluated their project using Bloom’s taxonomy higher order thinking questions. Looking at how and why our projects were ready to be submitted as well as what they would change next time.