My First Lesson...

Today I taught my first lesson. English with ICT. The children were re-capping work they had done on writing a formal thank you letter. The letters were to be typed. I had the children in the classroom. I drew a page on the board and the children told me what the features of a letter were and where they went on the page. I asked them about indenting a paragraph and how they would do this on a computer. I got the expected response of either they wouldn’t or they would press the space bar until it was indented enough. I explained that there was a key that they should use for indenting and that it would always indent the same amount. Using a keyboard and a “glamorous” assistant I showed them where to find it.

The lesson went well as I sent two groups into the computer room with the LSA’s and I stayed with a group to do a guided write before they typed up their letter. However, what I failed to take into account is the children’s lack of knowledge of the capabilities of Word. Although they knew and understood the layout of the letter I had neglected to factor in the need for right and left alignment for the address and date and then to write the letter. The LSA’s did an excellent job of advising the children but was an issue that in hindsight I would have addressed in an IT lesson prior to this English work. When using a non-interactive whiteboard in the classroom it was not possible to instruct the children on formatting settings. However if the lesson had been carried out in the computer room I could have instructed using the board and circling and showing them what to use and where to find them. However, this would have taken longer, the children tend to be distracted when in the computer room and many don’t follow the lessons. The school’s current aim is to reduce the amount of “teacher talk time”.

All in all the lesson was a good start and I was pleased to be able to include computers right at the beginning. I will have to in future think more about the children’s prior learning and not take for granted the knowledge that I have and project it onto them.

(Picture taken from Google images: http://www.bankier.falkirk.sch.uk/images%5Ccomp2.jpg)