Preparation and Planning - Branching Databases ICT.

University Degree Education and Teaching

Preparation and Planning

Branching Databases ICT

For this period of my teaching practice I am teaching a class of year 4 children. In line with the class teachers planning I have planned for a number of sessions teaching branching databases. The sessions are based on the QCA scheme of work unit 4C.

Children need to understand the practical uses of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), The National Curriculum (2000, p.100) states that children in key stage 2 should be taught:

‘how to prepare information for development using ICT, including selecting suitable sources, finding information, classifying it and checking it for accuracy’

This unit helps children to understand the practical applications of ICT in sorting and classifying data.

Context

Assuming that the curriculum for ICT is to be delivered according to the QCA scheme of work, then this group of lessons builds on the children’s knowledge of databases (taught during year 3) unit 3C. The previous unit introduces children to the speed and efficiency of computer databases. This unit will develop their understanding of the uses and benefits of database software and be either introduced to or have their knowledge developed about classification of objects.

This unit is the introduction of the binary methods of sorting that computers use (this will be studied in year 6 – unit 6D using the internet to search large databases and to interpret information). Children in year 6 will be expected to understand the use of AND and OR statements within search criteria, and this unit on branching databases will introduce them to the concept behind this process

There are numerous cross curriculum links for this unit of work, primarily children will develop their understanding of sorting objects and dividing sets of objects into subsets (taught during numeracy –ongoing from year 1) and classification (taught during science – ongoing from year 1).

It is worth including at this point that the QCA schemes of work are not compulsory, it is difficult to see however, how the aims of the National Curriculum could be met without introducing children to databases (as in unit 3C) and then adding to their knowledge and understanding in this area (as in unit 4C and 6D). These plans do not therefore become invalid if the QCA scheme of work is not being followed.

The National Curriculum (2000, p.96) for ICT is based on the need to equip children with the skills to ‘participate in a rapidly changing world in which work and other activities are increasingly transformed by access to varied and developing technology.’

Children’s usual contact with computers is to play games or to create artwork; there is a need to give children some experience of the usual use for computers in the real world. For most of us, our contact with computers is generally through data handling. We take for granted the ease at which information is retrieved and manipulated. We have to introduce children to this area of computer use in order for them to realise the huge potential and use that ICT plays in their life. This area of the National Curriculum is attempting to address this issue

Progression, continuity and coherence of the planned sessions

When planning to teach this unit of work I accepted the premise that the children should be introduced to the subject matter at the most basic level and although some children will probably have some prior knowledge, none would be assumed. The school has been following the QCA scheme of work so it would be obvious to assume the completion of unit 3 c.

The initial game with a selection of objects is taken from the QCA scheme of work; it would be easy to discount the planning ideas and to formulate a different activity that would have the same key idea. I have contemplated the pros and con’s of using pre-planned activities, lesson and medium term plans and have come to the conclusion that there is little point in trying to re-invent the wheel. The amount of time that is available to teachers for lesson planning is not enormous; I have concluded that it is acceptable to use readily available planning and resources as long as these fit the learning objectives identified independently. There are numerous methods of acquiring such plans and resources and I have found that the Internet provides a multitude of web sites that contain appropriate material. There is also a huge amount of material that is inappropriate, it is important to retain a degree of objectivity when selecting material to use.

The QCA units are recommended by the DfEE (Government Department for Education and Skills) and are generally an excellent starting point when planning to teach a unit of work. These plans obviously need to be developed and tailored to suit both the class and as importantly the teacher – the teacher needs to be comfortable and committed to the plans for the lesson to work effectively.

I have arranged the sessions to initially provide a period of consolidation of learning from the previous session and to introduce the next activity. Each activity leads on to the next with ...

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I have arranged the sessions to initially provide a period of consolidation of learning from the previous session and to introduce the next activity. Each activity leads on to the next with the progression being constant and realistic, children who find any activity difficult can spend additional time on an activity with additional support if needed prior to moving on. I have considered the differentiation of tasks and concluded that for this activity most children will be able to follow the planned activities although the amount of time and the amount of teacher assistance that is required may differ. I have planned that the initial activity of session 1 will continue until the children have a good grasp of the concept. I have predicted that approximately 75% of the pupils will be able to complete the activities with little additional adult intervention; I have planned that the remaining 25% will be able to form one group that I will be able to work with through the sessions and each activity. The remaining children will be able to proceed through each session with sufficient work to maximise their learning potential.

There are 4 or 5 children whom I predict will be able to complete all the activities and will have additional opportunities to explore the associated software and develop a better understanding of the concept. I realistically predict that all children will be able to produce their own branching database (with different levels of support), to have had the opportunity to explore at least one of their peers’ databases, and to have produced display quality information for inclusion in a wall display.

Teaching Approaches

Children have different learning styles – or in truth there are a variety of ways that children learn and each child will favour one or more of these.

The planning of each session includes a period of teacher led instruction, children that like their information presented orally will benefit from this part of the lesson. Each session also contains collaborative group work that will allow children the opportunity to discuss and refine their ideas; Vygotsky theorised that children are able to reach a higher level of achievement with the assistance of someone who has a greater understanding of the subject – he called it a zone of proximal development; hopefully the mixed ability groupings and the input that I can have as a teacher will assist some children in this way. There are numerous opportunities within my planning for children to consolidate and extend their knowledge of the subject matter, revisiting the work from previous sessions and using it for extension activities will compound the children’s understanding.

Another style of learning is experiential, children will gain a huge amount of experience of branching databases during these sessions and will be exploring the subject matter. They will have the opportunity to create a set of binary questions (the beginning of creating a branching database) and to have the questions tested by themselves and by their peers; the creation of a computer based database will allow the refinement of these questions and the input from other children, and the subsequent changing of questions will show children the provisionality of ICT based solutions (a prime aim of the ICT curriculum)

The sessions have a degree of differentiation built into them at the medium term level; the detailed planning of each session will allow for more detailed differentiation of tasks. I would expect to organise the differentiation using different methods for each session.

This differentiation can be achieved by: -

Altering the amount of time available to complete a particular task
Altering the expected outcome of a task set
A completely different task
Different amount of adult assistance

Or a combination of a number of the above points.

There is an overriding proviso within these plans that the children who have the most difficulty will be in a group that receives the most support from the teacher. I perceive that this group will achieve a similar degree of progress as the others although their understanding may be less complete; I believe that using a branching database created from their own work will give them a more detailed understanding of the initial process – it appears to be an example of the chicken and the egg; I believe that helping some children to create a database will ultimately give them the appropriate understanding of the concept. This approach is discussed by Proctor, Entwistle et al (1995 p.46) when discussing the planning of parallel activities along with the assertion that some activities will need to planned so that minimal teacher intervention is required and so allow the teacher to focus on one small group of children at a time.

The children that exceed the learning objectives will be able to complete more of the objectives and to gain further experience of the software in use. It is difficult with this kind of planning to provide extension activities that are not just more of the same experience, children will be able to extend their database and experience the ease at which this type of database can have records added to them.

Ultimately these plans (as with all medium term planning) will need to be reassessed after each teaching episode. The assessment of children’s progress after each session will inform the detailed planning of the next session(s); the differentiation may have to be more marked and the number of sessions be extended. I feel that I have a fairly good understanding of the children’s abilities – having now spent a period of time working with them and having used this time to informally assess their ICT skills (I have taught numerous lessons where there has been use of ICT and observed the class teacher). I have also had discussions with the class teacher in an attempt to validate these opinions and feel that the projected development of these sessions is realistic. This concern over the ability of pupils is generally minimised for class teachers as they soon discover the abilities of the children within their class – I have often equated the role of planning as a student teacher as similar to that of the class teacher in September when the teacher has little understanding of their classes ability levels save the third party information gained from the previous teacher and their related test results.

Expectations

There has been great debate regarding the expectations that teachers have of children’s work and behaviour. Merton introduced the idea of Self-fulfilling Prophecy in 1948, The theory is simple to understand; when we have an expectation of another persons behaviour we transmit these expectations to them through our body language and our approach to them. The 2nd party will then unintentionally alter their behaviour to try and fulfil our expectation. This theory has become generally accepted and the impact on education has been well documented. The current governments drive to make teachers expectations higher is based upon this guiding principle. I have reflected this in my planning, particularly in terms of expected outcomes. Children can and should be expected to succeed; I have planned to include in my lesson introductions the expectations that I have for each lesson and for the overall topic.

Classroom organisation and management

The management of children within the classroom is obviously central to the learning experiences that children will have. If we as teachers are to spend time planning and preparing lessons/activities that will enable children to develop the required skills, then it is only by completing these activities and taking part in the lessons that children will gain the required knowledge, skills and understanding.

The management of behaviour begins with clear and consistent expectations. I understand the importance of my persona within the classroom and have worked hard to achieve the appropriate relationship with the children that I am teaching.

Classroom organisation is an important point that I would expect to include in daily lesson plans. The medium term plans could be used within any school; the individual lesson plans will be specific to the group of children and the environment in which the lesson will take place, planning for small groups and accepting the limitations of resources will allow any teacher to manage the classroom environment more effectively.

Special Educational Needs (SEN)

The term special educational needs is recognised as referring to those children that will not achieve what is expected of their peers without some form of additional support. By this definition the simple act of differentiation is aimed at meeting the needs of these pupils. There are no children with individual education plans, or any that have received an educational statement within this group – although one child has caused concern and is being monitored closely.

Often children with a special educational will have additional adult support or will require a higher degree of observation. As stated previously the medium term plans do not include detailed planning that is child specific; I believe that the plans at this level have sufficient flexibility to address these issues within the more detailed lesson plans.

It is important to maintain high yet realistic expectations of achievement for children with Special Educational Needs. It is easy to modify the expectations so dramatically and to prejudice their learning simply by having low expectations, by knowing the individual child, and working within their Individual Education Plan, appropriate expectations can be used for children with SEN.

ICT specific issues

Within any ICT planning the main focus will be for children to gain knowledge and skills within the framework of the curriculum within this subject. It is important to remember the variety of experience and knowledge that children will have gained outside of school. The school at which I am currently teaching is a small school within an affluent rural setting, and most of the children have access to computers at home.

ICT is probably the subject where children’s prior knowledge can be most varied; children will generally be exposed to numeracy and literacy skills at school and consolidate this knowledge at home, with ICT often the exposure will begin at home and children will bring this knowledge into school. It is generally the computer usage skills that are most developed in children with regular access to a personal computer at home.

There is obviously a need to consider the number of computers that are accessible at any one time and to recognise the limitations that this places on classroom activities. Within my planning I have accepted that there will need to be parallel activities for children who are waiting to use the computers; time sitting in front of the computer is a debatable point, should I accept that some children will need longer to achieve similar results, or is it only fair to allow each child the same time. In practice it seems that in planning, similar time has to be made available to each student, yet in practice some children will require additional time to receive the full benefit of each activity. I am slightly uneasy with the result of this as those children who have a higher than average ability and finish the activities in less time generally are unable to progress their learning by attempting progressive activities as this would entail them using more than their allotted time. Again in practice the solution can be easy with those children who do not require the consolidation period planned for the beginning of each session to use this time to progress onto more challenging activities. There is also an opportunity for these high achieving children to have access to the computers during play times to complete their tasks (this opens up the debate regarding importance of playtime which I do not intend to discuss here).

Conclusion

The ability to source appropriate schemes of work, such as the QCA units will improve the quality of lessons planned. This I believe is due to the time limitations that teachers experience; the use of these schemes allows teachers to concentrate on the detail of the teaching that is related to the individual children, whilst having the confidence that the broad aims of the lesson will meet the National Curriculum.

For this unit I believe that it can be integrated much further into the curriculum than these plans allow. Running this set of lessons in parallel with a set of science lessons dealing with classification and a set of mathematics lessons dealing with sets and subsets would have provided a much clearer and consistent approach, and lead to the children having a much better grasp of all of these subjects as each lesson would provide a period of consolidation.

These plans have been drawn up to use in a particular period of school experience, and they have the limitations of the time available and the subject matter that I had agreed to cover. With hindsight I would have had further discussion with the class teacher to either postpone these lessons or to include the allied scientific and mathematical principles within my allotted teaching time.