ICT at key stages 1 and 2    (Year 2)

• Almost any topic could be used, eg pets, ways of getting to school, favourite pastimes or houses and homes.
• Ask the children to think about their house. Ask one or two to describe their house. Make a list of questions to ask about the houses, eg How many people live there? What is it made from? Make a class pictogram using a prepared set of pictures that are relevant to the location.
• Ask the children to use the pictogram to answer some simple questions, eg How many people live in stone houses? How many live in brick houses? Do more people live in houses made of brick than stone?
• Now ask the children more questions, eg Who lives in a stone house? Does the pictogram or graph provide this information?
• Repeat this process by making a pictogram of the number of residents and encourage the children to ask similar questions, eg How many children live in houses with three other people? How many children live in houses with five other people? Who lives with four other people? Does the pictogram or graph provide this information?

• Discuss with the children the kind of information that might be useful when looking at houses (but any topic would do).
• Ask children to suggest questions to find out the information needed. Record these questions so that all children can see them.
• Select one of the questions and ask the children what types of answers they would expect. If the question is, Which family lives in this house? they might suggest a surname as the answer. Write down the answer. There will be a different answer for each house they consider. If the question is, Does this house have a garden? there can be two possible answers - yes or no. These are the types of questions that will be practised over the next few activities.
• Games such as 'Guess Who' provide an excellent way of practising the asking of questions with yes or no answers. You can make your own version of the game using coloured photographs of children in the class. Children should be encouraged to ask simple questions, eg Is it a boy? In response to the answer, children should turn over the photographs that do not comply. This process should be completed until only one photograph remains.

• Construct a paper-based binary tree using a set of objects such as fruit. Prepare some strips of paper for recording the questions. Cut a set of red arrows for 'no' answers and green arrows for 'yes' answers. Collect a set of fruit, such as banana, apple, apricot, grapefruit, grape. Select two of these pieces of fruit, eg the banana and apple. Ask a question to distinguish between them (the answers can be yes or no), eg Is it yellow? Put down a red and a green arrow leading from the question strip. Put the banana at the end of the green (yes) arrow and the apple at the end of the red (no) arrow. Now choose another piece of fruit such as a grape. Ask the first question again. This time the answer will be 'no'. Follow the 'no' arrow and construct a question to distinguish between the apple and the grape. The question might be Is it small? Position this question strip at the end of the red arrow with a red and green arrow leading from it. The apple should follow the red 'no' arrow and the grape should follow the green 'yes' arrow. Repeat this process with each piece of fruit in turn.
• Use a commercially prepared file on a binary tree database to replicate this activity or create your own on an appropriate topic. Ideally, there will be relevant artefacts or visual aids available for children to handle so that this is a concrete activity. Children should select one artefact from the set and use the software to identify it. They should then select a second artefact and follow the question and answer sequence in order to identify it. Repeat this until all of the artefacts are named. Attribute blocks or 3D shapes might be appropriate.

• Discuss other types of questions and answers with the children. Refer to the original set of questions generated by the children. Perhaps one question might be, How many windows has your house - three, four, five, six or seven? This type of question has only one possible answer from the list. Have some samples of questionnaires available that use this type of question.
• Point out that questions can also be posed which are answered more easily by using a tick-box approach, where more than one choice may be appropriate, eg Does your house have a chimney, a garden, central heating, an upstairs, a garage, a satellite dish?
• Show the children a simple completed database (based on the information provided by the children) and demonstrate how the search tool enables specific questions to be answered. Encourage children to ask their own questions and see if they can use the search tool to find out the answers. Provide a simple aide-memoire to illustrate the process of asking questions using the search tool. Draw up a short list of questions from those suggested by the children with a simple means of recording their answers.

• Using the same database, prepare a sheet of questions that can be answered, but include some that cannot because appropriate data is missing.
• Discuss with the children what data might need to be added.

• Draw up a simple questionnaire with the children about their favourite teddy bear ensuring that all of the above types of questions are included. Produce a paper-based copy of the questionnaire for all children to complete. The questions might ask, eg the name of the child, the name of the teddy if it has one, the teddy's height and weight, its favourite sandwich (from a choice of four varieties) and its favourite jelly (from a choice of four varieties).
• Replicate the questionnaire structure in a simple database program and enter the data ready for the next lesson with the children's help, if possible.
• Show the children the completed database and demonstrate how the search tool enables specific questions to be answered. Encourage children to ask their own questions and see if they can use the search tool to find out the answers.
• Produce a list of questions with the children. These questions should be used as a starting point for a question and answer investigation. They should record their own questions and the answers they found.