exemplar activities

Unit 1 Activity 9 - Recording events - Exemplar 2

I chose to do another activity in this unit as we had been talking about Red Nose Day all week and it would be nice for the pupils to be reminded of the fun they had dressing up all in red for a day and helping to raise money for Comic relief. Ict was chosen as with all the pupils in the class they all used different means to access the computer and they all had different concepts to understanding. All the children had made the effort to dress up and having the digital camera made it very simple to add the pictures to a multimedia programme for them to use. I spent some of the morning taking photos of our pupils and when I had a moment I looked through the photos to decide which ones would be used.

Once I had chosen the photos, which happened to be the better ones I then opened up switch it maker and was ready to make my photo album. We have six children so I used just one photo of each and a group photo, with our mascot for the school, Lenny the lion with his pants on as the first page.

I inserted each photo first to make eight pages in all. Then returned to first page and tried to make the caption fit with the photo of each child, I typed it in and pressed enter and the text was added underneath the picture, all eight pages typed.

We had listened to the comic relief record all week and all the children enjoyed this so much that I added this to the sound on each page, as it was a tape we had I had to use a tape recorder and the microphone to record.

I also added the words of the text to the recording. Firstly I stared of with the music recording turning the volume down slightly then adding the words and turning the music back up for a short time after. I stopped the recording by turning down the volume first and the pressing stop, which made the recording sound better and not just sounding like I had just turned the tape recorder off.

Now I was nearly finished, all that was to be done was to choose an opening for the pages. I thought this would benefit the children as it was a very plain to have just the picture come up. They all had something slightly different.

I was now satisfied with the outcome and saved my pages and gave it a name, guess what, yes Red Nose Day. It was now there for the children and to bring back memories. It would always be another way for the children to tell people and show them that it's not all work no play in our school and we do care for others. Every pupil would be able to access this programme with different types of switches, which they all use in our class.

On the Monday morning in assembly we would be talking about what we did on the Friday, so before hand all the children had a turn on the computer with an adult to discuss the past event.

With my 1-1 I discussed the event and I talked through the pages with her. When she heard the music she smiled and recognised it. You were able to tell that although the picture would not be clear to her, when her name was mention she smiled too. This meant that assembly was more meaningful. When we had an adult from the SEC over, (he comes once every week) one of our students with their switch went through the programme with him, both pupil and adult enjoyed it, we could hear him talk through the words after the music was finished and our student laughing away, which was really nice to hear.

I would use this kind of activity again and again as it was really easy and I found it was not difficult to follow the instructions form the programme, except I needed someone to help me with the text as I didn't realise that you just need to press enter and it added to the picture. I am going to investigate this programme more and try and use clip art and other forms of recording sound. I see when you first come into this programme you see George and he comes up after 4 presses of a switch I can see this being useful too, with other children who understand the concept of switching.

Photo from scanner. All photo's in portfolio

Here are some comments from a staff member who doesn't normally work with our children.

I supported a PMLD pupil on the computer using the big red switch and the programme of Red Nose Day. The child I worked with was very keen to use the switch which in turn changed the picture with the music. She recognised the Helen voice and responded well. She lifted her head and gave good eye contact to look at the pictures, responding positively to requests to lift head or to use the hand switch. She loved the music and got very excited when she heard it.

I do feel this programme was well worth looking at. And Helen did a fine job with it in every respect.

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