From DB Primary Wiki

A Learning Platform at KS1 and Foundation Stage

Children and teachers at Key Stage One and the Foundation Years will often need to approach a learning platform in a different way than children at the Junior Stage.

Below are some suggestions of how the main features of DB Primary can be utilised effectively with an Infant age class. All of the suggested activities have proven sucessful in practice with Infant classes.

Designing Your Community Pages

Include colourful stimulation such as Wordle images (http://www.wordle.net/):

Embed a video, post links to learning, photos, art works. Include collaboration for interaction:

Also visit our Multimedia page for further information on embedding multimedia into your community page:

On the Community_Admin* page you can find detailed information on building your community page from scratch.*

Blogs

Write a blog assuming the role of a character in a book you are reading.

Blog from the point of view of someone involved in the topic theme, e.g. Fire of London.

Blog on an event at the school or a trip:

Forums

One way to look at forums is as a ‘virtual carpet time’ – an online space to have those conversations, question & answer sessions, discussions etc. Forums can be used in a number of ways. Depending on their ability and the topic, children could make written or pictorial responses to a topic thread.

Remember, important threads can be made 'Sticky' so they don't get lost amongst the other threads. This can be done in the edit view of the admin screen.

Also, teacher/admin users could use the admin tools (via the cogs) in a forum to keep conversations on-topic.

Here are a few ideas:

Threads that lead into a new topic:

'Ask a question about...' (kids can answer each other)

'What do you know about?'

'Find some websites about...and share them on the forum'

Threads during topic work:

'What’s your favourite toy?’

'Draw a picture of...' (minibeasts)

Reflections on topic work:

'What have you enjoyed about...?'
'What do you need more help on?'
'Tell us one thing you have learned about...'

Other possible threads:

'Continue my sentence': the children add a sentence of their own to make a collaborative class story.
Make my sentence more interesting, for example:

Title: Help me out please Y5!

“Hi. Thanks for helping.
Would you mind making this boring sentence more interesting?
‘The cat walked into the garden.’
Thanks!”

‘Moving to Year 3.’ A thread for children to share any anxieties or expectations about moving up to a new class and new teacher.
Have a discussion with a fictional character (Santa Claus, historical character).
School Council suggestions.
Have a whole-school forum – ‘Do we have a problem with bullying?’ ‘What do you think of the uniform?’ etc.
Post a stimulus (words, pictures, video) and get children to think of questions.
Post a picture, poem, other stimulus and invite pupils to contribute thoughts, adjectives etc.

'My Work' Area

Upload your own documents, relevant to what you are learning.

Create documents, draw pictures, make url links and publish your favourites to the relevant community.

Community Galleries: Show off your work!

Let children publish work they are proud of to the class or topic community. Once the teacher approves this it can be seen within this community gallery.

Upload pictures to share with the whole school community including parents. These may include example of artwork, written work, stars of the week, pictures of children working or taking part in a school activity.

School Trip Photos

Advertise excellent work

Surveys

Reflection on learning: What did you enjoy most about the topic we studied?

Leading into a topic: What would you most like to find out about for the following topic?

Linked to various curriculum areas, such as Mathematics and Geography:

1. Transport: How do you come to school?

2. How many vehicles pass school in 15 minute period & what kind? Could have groups in different areas of town to compare results.
This covers KS1 QCA Geography guidelines for ‘investigating the human features of their own environment’ and developing and using geographical enquiry skills, including fieldwork skills’.

3. What is your favourite…?

The above activities can also been shown in graphical format and will addresses several National Curriculum (England and Wales) requirements at Key Stage 1 and covers the following Learning Objectives defined by the National Numeracy Strategy Guidelines for England:

Year 1 Block C: Handling Data and Measures:

Solve a given problem by sorting, classifying and organising information in simple ways, such as in a list or simple table, pictogram or block graph

On the Surveys* help page you can find detailed information on creating and setting surveys.*

Quizzes

Use for summative assessment at the end of a topic

Plenary quizzes at end of lesson

Results of quizzes can also be seen in a graphical format: pie charts and block graphs and teachers can also view how much time each pupil spent on each question.

On the Quizzes* help page you can find detailed information on creating and setting quizzes.*

Tasks

When a child logs into DB Primary, if you have set them a task, this task will appear prominently on their homepage. Tasks are useful for directing pupils towards forum threads, quizzes or surveys you have set up.

On the Taskmanager* help page you can find detailed information on creating and setting tasks.*

Projects

Visit the following links for a couple of projects ideas:

Year 2: Where in the World is Barnaby Bear?

Barnabybear

School Twinning

Link to a feeder school or a school in another part of the country to explore similarities and differences.
If you know another school with DB Primary who would like to carry out a twinning, you could set this up yourself.
Otherwise, you could contact the DB Primary Support team (01273-201719/mgreen@editure.co.uk) to ask them to organise this for you.
For further information on setting up an exchange, please visit our school twinning help wiki:

Twinning

DB Primary help wiki

KS1