ICT (Information Communication & Technology) integration in the classroom is not about technology but teaching. It is the teacher’s innovativeness that makes lesson delivery meaningful. I believe that the purpose of integrating ICT is to improve the quality of teaching and learning. It will also equip learners with 21st century skills such as high order thinking skills. I have selected the subject Mathematics of grade one. Particularly I went with the topic on ‘2 D shapes’. Among many tools of ICT, I chose to make appropriate use of the Power Point Presentation graphics to teach about the 2-D shapes to children of lower primary, grade one.
I believed that the Voice Over PowerPoint Presentation on 2-D shapes will help my children in engaging
themselves in multiple learning styles. It will increase their visual impact of
2-D shapes, improve the audience impact, enrich curriculum with
interdisciplinary, and break out topics into understandable points.
Creation
of the teaching material
First I created the PowerPoint Presentation by making best use of all the features and tools available in it. It was easier for me to integrate graphics and animations into my slides to illustrate the key points of the topic. I made sure that colour combinations were put into consideration while preparing every slide show using PowerPoint. I used good colour combination that made the text readable. Some text were found to be read clearly and easily when good combinations were used while some text were found to be bad for those colour blindness when bad colour combinations were used. I kept good contrast between the text and the background. Background of the PowerPoint slides was very important to teaching and learning. Since I was preparing the slides for grade one children, I used the background according to their standard and interests.
Usually children of lower primary are fond of different colours. So I made use of attractive colours. In case of text font, I made use of two different fonts differentiating the topics and the body parts. I used Arial Black as a text font to write the key points in the slides which is very easy to read for many people. For the topic I used Bradley Hand ITC as a text font in order to make the slides more attractive with childish design in order to fascinate my children. I used different font colour whenever I wanted to highlight an important point in my slides rather than Italics, Bolds or underlining. To create the 2-D shapes, I used the various shapes available in the PowerPoint and used fill colour to make the shapes colourful, bright and attractive. Making use of the different colours for the shapes will help me to gain the attention of the learners.
In order to show the features of shapes such as slide and roll, I made use of motion path effect from custom animation feature to move the shapes and make it look like reality. I added different animations in texts as well to make it interesting, lively and attractive for the viewers. I customized the 2-D shapes by adding eyes and mouth so that children will be excited to learn. As a teacher while preparing the PowerPoint slides, I was courteous of the use of slide layout tools. I did not put too much information on each slide. I used bullet to state my points rather than continuous prose. For each slide maximum of three to four bullet points were used only. The PowerPoint Presentation on 2-D shapes will help me to convey the meaning of 2-D shapes, examples of 2-D shapes and features of 2-D shapes to the children.
Then I recorded the narration for each slide by going to Slide Show pane and selecting the Record Narration. I already had scripts ready for the narration so that I can have smooth recording of the narration. I had to record for multiple times before getting the perfect and satisfactory narration for the slides. I wanted to add narration so that my children can read the slides as well as listen carefully which will also develop their listening skills. I further added some spice into my presentation. To make my narration look soothing and pleasant, I added a background music called 'Uplifting Acoustic' throughout my presentation. I found the combination of the music with my voice too good to be heard by my children. Well, I got the music from the internet. Finally I converted the voice over presentation into video to be uploaded in this blog.
Henceforth, the Voice Over PowerPoint Presentation will serve as content-based materials for me in teaching the topic 2-D shapes to my children of lower primary grade one. My PowerPoint Presentation comprises of 8 slides including the introduction of the topic, description of the 2-D shapes, basic 2-D shapes along with its feature, activity for the children and conclusion of the lesson.
To see whether my
children have understood the topic taught through the presentation or
not, I included a very simple activity for the children in the presentation .
Activity
(8 minutes): In a group of three members each, you will discuss and write at
least two things that you can see in a classroom similar to:
• Square
• Rectangle
• Circle
• Triangle
Instructions
for the use of content-based material
Teaching learning
materials in teaching are crucial to the success of student achievement. To
integrate ICT in teaching material is not as easy as one think. I could not
think of any other tool of ICT to develop my teaching resource on the topic
‘2-D Shapes’. I ended up creating a PowerPoint Presentation with voice over narration on 2-D shapes by
making full use of all the features available in the Microsoft PowerPoint. I developed
the material with a set of objectives in my mind. Through the presentation, I
wanted to ensure my children of grade one to:
·
learn the concept of 2-D shapes
·
know the basic names of 2-D shapes along
with the features such as number of edges and corners
·
identify things in real life that look similar
to those 2-D shapes included in the presentation
·
relate their real lives with the 2-D
shapes and make connections
·
know the spelling of 2-D shapes correctly
·
tell and write the features of 2-D
shapes in correct sentence structure.
I will use the material
throughout the lesson i.e. LESSON INTRODUCTION, LESSON DEVELOPMENT and LESSON CONCLUSION. Through the first slide of the presentation, children will be
introduced with the topic of the lesson as ‘2-D Shapes’. The picture of some
basic 2-D shapes on the first slide along with the topic will give the children
a very crystal clear concept on the 2 dimensional shapes. Starting from the
second till seventh slide of the presentation, children will be taught on the
main contents of the topic. They will be taken to the lesson development. They
will learn about the definition of 2-D shapes and basic names of common 2-D
shapes along with its features. Children
will be able to see the shape with its feature on the slide one by one and it
will not create confusion among the shapes in children. For some features of
shapes like slide and roll, children will see the visual picture of the shape
rolling and sliding with the help of animation put into it. These will give
them concrete images of how the shapes slide and roll. Children will also
perform an activity after the content has been conveyed to them. The instructions for the activity will be clearly displayed on the power point. The designed
activity will help the children to further enhance their understating on 2-D
shapes. The final eighth slide of the presentation will be used for lesson
conclusion where I will ask some children to recapitulate the key points learnt
and give examples of some 2-D shapes.
In order to make appropriate use of this
content based-material, both teacher and children must be ready with a
projector, a laptop and a sound box in a classroom. Probably the IT labs/rooms can be used
to project the presentation to the children due to easy availability of the
projectors and computers in the room. Without the presence of projector, it
will be difficult to display the presentation clearly visible to all the
children. Projector will help to project the presentation very clearly and
visibly.
