Use of VLE (Moodle) and Forums in Literacy

Moodle is great! Well it would be if it was more user friendly! Perseverence though does pay off as the possibilitites it opens up are quite exciting.

I already use Moodle as a great way to share our learning in class with parents (photos, videos, topic summaries, weekly messages, homework) and to extend the learning opportunities for children at home (links to games/challenges/websites linked to what we are doing in class).

Forums are a great way to get all the children's reactions and ideas for a certain subject or question. They really enjoy reading each others comments and responding to each other. I decided to use this in a literacy lesson today based on describing story settings.

This approach reminded me of the handheld text units that many companies offer allowing every child to type their ideas which are instantly displayed on the screen for the teacher and class to discuss. I set up a forum with 6 pictures of different settings and following the input invited the children to explore the forum and write descriptions for their chosen picture. 

What suprised me was how quickly and effectively ideas were shared. Firstly they could read each others comments as inspiration and secondly I could quickly review all comments on the class whiteboard, sharing and discussing the best throughout the lesson. Real time reviewing of contributions allowed me to highlight spellings (where appropriate), basic sentence errors, improvements etc. after which the children could then go back and edit their ideas. Every child engaged, every child recognised, every child progressing. Just as teachers use the internet daily for inspiration and resources, children here have been sharing and using each others ideas to progress in their learning

The follow up work to this saw the children reviewing all the comments on a chosen setting, selecting their favourite ideas (their choice as writers) and using these to write a short descriptive paragraph. This was handwritten - making sure the balance is kept between handwriting and typing skills.

I wonder in what other ways forums can be used to enhance learning and thinking skills? (peer assessment, reviewing learning,  remote collaborative working...)