ICT at key stages 1 and 2    (Year 1)

• Show children a screen for dressing the teddy. When using the computer ask children if they would put the clothes on in the same manner as they would dress a real teddy. Demonstrate the difficulties in dressing a real teddy, eg how the clothes have to be fitted over legs and arms. Compare this with dressing the teddy on screen where clothes can be positioned easily.
• Ask the children what would happen if they tried to hide a teddy under a mat or behind a picture. Show them alternative screens and discuss whether they are good representations of reality.

• Demonstrate a selection of screens where children need to make choices for a particular purpose, eg picking a football strip, choosing appropriate clothes for a sporting event, designing a room, making an identikit picture.
• Give children lots of opportunities to use the screens and to talk about why they made specific choices.
• When all of the children have had a turn, discuss the basis on which they made their decisions.

• Look at a simple adventure game or simulation. Work through the beginning of the game or simulation with all the children together. Discuss the sort of environment or situation it represents.
• Ask the children if the representation is a good one and what similarities or differences they can see.
• Devise a set of questions to ask children, eg If they were out in the countryside, would they be able to hear anything? What might they hear? Can they hear the same sorts of things when they use the adventure game? If the scene depicts an urban area, what sorts of things would they expect to hear? Does the adventure game have these? When we can hear traffic, what does it tell us? Can we tell if it is going fast or slow? How does the computer show this?
• Provide opportunities for children to explore the program. Encourage the children to discuss the decisions or choices they make and why they make them.

• In a class discussion ask the children to compare the adventure game with real life through a series of questions, eg Do the characters in the adventure game ever get tired? Do the children get tired when they go out for a long walk or on a long journey? Do the characters ever need to stop and eat or go to the toilet? Does the adventure game show us what season it is? Does this matter? If it was a different season, would this affect the way the characters were dressed? When we see representations on the television how realistic are they? Are cartoons as realistic as representations using real people in real places? Are these sorts of programmes exactly like real life? Do they think that actors would really get hurt?

• Demonstrate how a simple painting program can be used to create a visual representation of a scenario, eg a place or a picture of their favourite meal or character; a friendly, or not-so-friendly monster.
• Allow children to experiment and create their own representations, using simple tools, eg brushes, colour-fill, palette.
• Show the children how to use the print tool to print out their own work.
• Demonstrate how stamps/motifs or clip art can be used to create more complex representations, eg a garden, a zoo or a fantasy world with dragons, wizards and witches. The stamps or clip art will enable them to create more detailed representations.
• Ask the children to create their own representation using stamps or clip art. They should print out their work and discuss why they chose particular stamps or pictures.

• Discuss with the children the different ways the computer was used to represent real or fantasy situations. Tell them that they are going to create their own representations and they can choose what they would like to represent and how they will do it using appropriate software. This might be linked to topic work, eg a story or nursery rhyme, designing a new classroom or school, concocting a new set of meals for school dinners, visualising places to go on holiday, fantasy creatures from out-of-space or new modes of transport for the next century.
• Children should decide on the environment or representation that they wish to create. They should think about what it will look like and what sorts of decisions or choices they will have to make.
• Some children will be able to use a text tool or a word processor to produce a caption for their representation.