Observation of an ICT lesson 10/1/08

The lesson was identifying the school and the pupil’s homes using Google Earth.

The children had already looked at paper maps in their geography lesson and had discussed where they lived, the country, county, city and local areas.

The ICT lesson was thirty minutes long as the class had to be split into two groups.

The teacher showed the children how to find the school using Google Earth and the children copied. For homework, the children were asked to write down their street name, which in the lesson they had to type into the computer programme. The class then discussed how it zoomed out to the whole world and then you could slowly zoom into the country, the city, they local area and then into their own street. This was to try to help the children get some perspective on the size of our local area compared to the rest of the world.

The teacher briefly discussed how the pictures were taken by satellite but they can be a bit old. At this point they looked back at the picture of the school, which still had building work and the children came to the conclusion that the pictures were about a year old. This was to highlight that the internet can be useful, but they must understand that it maybe out of date or wrong and that they must be careful when using the information found on the internet.

The role of questioning: Questions were used to move the lesson on, build understanding and confirm the children’s understanding. However, there was less questioning used in this ICT lesson then I had witnessed in literacy and maths.

Features to build into my own teaching: Children, even in year two have a good understanding of computers and the internet and can do complex things.

To remind children how to be safe on the internet and the reliability of it.