Engaging formally with the New Primary Framework for Literacy and Numeracy this week, has proven a steep learning curve. Getting my head round what the documentation means has been challenging in places, I knew what I wanted to achieve in my planning from past experience, but finding and defining/refining the learning objectives to meet these within particular sessions within the new documentation sometimes proved problematic, since they had been moved, often appeared woolly and required unpicking, to find, identify and define specific aspects for particular sessions. In our planning process this week we have worked with the new framework alongside existing documentation to help this. Working in this way has proven really beneficial, using the new framework to define the progression while identifying aspects to support this from within the older more specific objective structure.
Being an IKEA man I see my classroom practice as linked to a planning process that involves designing for learning. The more open and flexible, structure of the new framework, provides a space to enable reflection and consideration of what I feel the students need to learn in order to achieve outcomes that draw on the wider curriculum as a source for support. I have my longer unit structure, enabling definition of outcome and identification of a more progressive approach to tool use and skill development through the Literacy curriculum as a cross curricular dimension. By taking a more global perspective I am able to use curricular forecasts to frame and consider the timescales necessary to embed the skills development process. This in turn enables me to identify and place development of these skills more readily within wider classroom activities I intend or am able to develop, allowing a window on progression towards the development of "quality" outcomes by students in relation to these by the end of a unit or beyond. This has also enabled me to bring to bare the wider view of what text and textuality mean to me within the context of the units I am planning within the themes we are working on.
Perhaps looking at the framework slightly differently will help me work with colleagues as subject leader for ICT, to progress the embedding process for ICTs as tools, if we see the documentation as a transformative device. A bridging tool between now and where we want to be.
In planning progression for our Poetry unit and beginning to organise the development of our classroom ICT areas for example, literacy tasks have been framed within a progression for ICT. In class we will be using desktop activities to develop vocabulary, engage with word play, presentation of words through for example calligrams, rebuses, shape poems, collecting and organising word lists, and shaping and reforming these in different ways. We have discussed using digital photography to capture other methods of representation, gesture and body shapes, presenting images to support "talking for writing" and collaborative engagement to develop group and paired poetry. The outcome for the unit of work overall is to create a class anthology. This alongside the development of handwriting for presentation, is the ICT focus for our outcome. Learning and revisiting in our ICT areas and online classroom initially how to format texts, using drag and drop, changing font style, colour, size, shape to bring new emphasis to textual elements that will engage our readers. Finding and importing images to support our meaning making. The aims of these activities to engage students in discussing use of words and exploring how we represent their meanings, while drawing on "available designs" from table top tasks to support this as the students engage with reconstructing the text.
The ICT skills tasks will have a focus on comprehension and meaning making, while introducing other poetic forms such as acrostics and list or shape poems. These will be used to consolidate the ICT skills base we need to develop, while preparing and extending classroom based experiences and tasks within use of the online classroom. As well as handwritten outcomes students will be using classroom based platforms to input drafts to screen based on desktop tasks, to be re-presented and edited later. Using the IWB the students will engage in modeling and familiarisation throughout the unit of text editing and formatting processes. As we work to complete the poetry unit in class, the works, developed through big writes, guided sessions and table top tasks, will enable extension of the literacy unit and word play, as they form tools and frames to be changed and re-presented using skills developed in focussed practical tasks towards the design outcome for the ICT unit. Our ICT unit outcome is to produce a desk top published class anthology.
I find thinking aloud really helpful, and thinking this through today has been really beneficial in beginning to clarify the links that I want to make. Thank you for listening.