Task 4 - Shrek Literacy

We have chosen Shrek the animated movie because of it's inter-textualisation. We discussed a lot of how the traditional fairy tales are challenged, such as:
-The pretty princess and then how she becomes ugly but she is happy in the end.

-Shrek is ugly and bullied an hated at the beginning but wins the pretty princess over the handsome prince.

-The idea of the donkey falling in love with the dragon highlights a friendly dragon, size doesn't matter and opposites attract.

-The King wanting the princess to marry the appropriate handsome prince, whilst ignoring his daughters wishes.

We thought of several activities relating to the characters and the idea of inter-textualisation. We decided to focus on year 6 because of the complex issues that could be raised but we also thought it could be easily adapted and simplified for younger children. A way of doing this would be to discuss pretty princesses and the comparison of princesses in real life and the meaning of pretty.

For year 6, we thought we could cover national literacy strategy strand 'Understanding and interpreting text' point 'Understand underlying themes, causes and points of view.' We thought we could do this through hot seating. We would have to introduce Shrek and its issues and themes through some introduction activities such as:
- Discussions through teacher asking questions:
+ Why is the princess unhappy when she is not pretty?
+ What is pretty?
+ What is the symbolism of the princess being ugly at nightime:
What does nightime/daytime represent?
+ Why does the princess decide to stay ugly? What is she thinking?
- Children could re-write a common fairy tale to modernise it in the style of Shrek
- Children could discuss and write character profiles and compare the characters to
other fairy tales.
- Role play and drama activities

Throughout all of these activities the teacher should be involved in the role play to help the story come to life. The teacher should also 'scaffold discussion to take their thinking to a higher level' (Marie Rich, 2007). During the hot seating the children will have enough knowledge to be able to play the part if the character and the teacher can be involved in questioning to stimulate the children and to keep the task focused and get to the heart of the issues.

Marie, Lucy and Jo xxx

Task 3 - Consumer Culture

Early Learning Centre

We decided to look at the early learning centre. The opening page was diplayed with children dressed up as Indians on a lovely sunny day playing happily. Not very realistic with the current weather in England! The website displayed large adverts of new toys and adverts for a mixture of 'girls,' 'boys' and 'baby' toys. They also advertised a book amnesty which looked really good as you could receive 20% of at the Early learning Centre by donating your old books.

When exploring the website it was clear that there were 'girls' toys which were the barbie's and dolls and everything pink and purple, the 'boys' toys were often darker in colour and were of a more violent nature. We felt this because the girls were pictured with the pink toys and the boys were pictured with their toys. There weren't many pictures of girls and boys playing happily together.

The site was aimed at parents and it was encourging them to buy the latest toy by advertising that they had over 300 new toys. It also offered lots of help in finding the perfect toys. There was also a small sqaure advertising an on-line game for children so this would encoruage children to go onto the site.

The products were arranged into categories by either age, or areas of learning such as books, music, role play or sports. I found it interesting when browsing through the dolls house and role play area and it was mainly aimed at girls but also advertised an 'ethnic' dolls family, this obviously widens their audience.

The range of literacies went from reading pictures such as happy children playing with new toys and really enjoying themselves to writing. The written text was spread out over the page in different boxes to explain different information.

Coca-Cola

The second website we visited was the coca cola website. It began with a colourful animated video of a coca cola bottle spraying the colours to make the opening page for the website.The website was more difficult to navigate than I had expected. The website was aimed at children 10 years and above as the actvities ranged from entering a competition to downloading music.

The competition is the main feature of the website and it is entitled 'poetry in motion' which didn't seemed to be as academic and as thought provoking as it sounded. You could watch entries which seemed to be all by Americans of short movie clips such as the wind blowing a carrier bag around.

The main coke related features of the website consisted of being able to watch the TV commercials which We thought could be quite useful. You can also download the latest music from the adverts. The website was very visually impressive as everytime I clicked on something the whole page moved around. We could access lots of movie clips and music. We was surprised at the audience that this website was aimed at as there was very little to engage children if anything at all. They had articles on nutrition but that was lenghthy written text which wouldn't appeal to children.

In terms of gender it was possibly more associated with males as there were football links although these would appeal to any female who had an interest in football.

In conclusion, although the first website we viewed did not have any musical literacies or video clips it was more appropriate for children to look at than the coca cola website which had a lot more literacies.

Lazytown

We decided to look at the LazyTown website as this is a site which is very popular with children due to the television programmes, books, music and the DVD. On entering the site the page was aimed at both genders with the key characters being the most prominent aspect. As the site loaded there were sound clips, characters moving and was also extremely eye catching with bold colours. The links menu at the top of the page was easibly readable for 5yrs and up. However once a child has been shown what to click on then a child as young as 3 would be able to fully navigate the site. It is completely aimed at children but there are some adult sections explaining the purpose of LazyTown, which is to get children active and moving. There is one area advertising new products to buy (aimed at parents), but this isn't as eyecatching as the games or general information about Sportacus and other characters.

The most important element to the website is probably the videos which show the characters dancing and singing, this encourages the children to get up and join in, this links the site to the very popular television programmes which also makes children get involved. The reading that had to be done on the website was of a very simple nature as it was minimal in terms of the amount of text used, this varies depending on what section you are on. However children using this site would have to look at the pictures and images and decide for themselves what had to be done, for example how the games had to be played due to there being no instructions to read. There are some sections aimed at older children and parents as some of the reading requires a more in depth look at the site for example when looking at the character's biographies or the aims of LazyTown. We found personally the site was very interesting and very easy to learn about the programme quickly.

Jo, Marie and Lucy

Task 2 - Critical Literacy

At a young age children have the adorable, humorous and often naive habit of trusting everything. As we grow older we think we become more sceptical, critical and negative. This although saddening, is essential to survive in our society.

Everyday throughout our daily routines we are being critical of different literacies. We might not believe all that we read in newspapers and magazines through experience and knowledge of influences affecting what the writers choose to write or draw. While reading a magazine we are persuaded that if we buy this shampoo our hair will automatically be shiny after three washes, or if we eat half a grapefruit before every meal we will loose a stone in a week. We use our previous experience and knowledge to determine how much we believe and therefore what shampoo to buy.

We think that as educators of a future generation we need to provide our pupils with the same skills. We think we need to craft children who don't simply view literacies negatively or sceptically but in a questioning way. So that they become individuals in control of their future, rather than sheep following the masses.

Marie, Lucy and Jo
xxx

Lucy's star pics!

Lucy's Pics!

Aqua - Barbie Girl

Barbie!

Concept cartoons

I don't know if anyone else has thought of it, but the concept cartoons in sciecne are multimodal, I'm using these in school on Monday so I'll let you know how the children respond to them.

Lucy

Spellings

Here's a website with a great little game for helping children with difficult spellings such as would, right, sight etc... I think this is really colourful and interactive, I would definately use it in school.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/spellits/home_flash.shtml

Lucy

Joining Sounds

This looks like a really useful activity to do with children - again very multimodal! Lots of activities and you can change the level of difficulty so it can be adapted for all ages.

http://demo.iboard.co.uk/screens/thread_home.htm?thread_id=12#

Lucy

Interactive Alphabet

I found this amazing link for a multimodal alphabet but also really useful for Reception and Year 1 and possibly beyond for those that struggle. I hope the link works!

http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/vtc/ngfl/ngfl-flash/alphabet-eng/alphabet.htm

Lucy

Henry

Here is a pic of my gorgeous dog Henry!

Lucy

Pub Crawl

Here are some pictures of Marie and I and the rest of the Anchor House on the Army pub crawl!!!

Lucy

Task 1 - Barbie Website

We started our search with the help of Google. We searched ‘Barbie’ because that is our theme. We scanned the results (first page only) and chose the most exciting. This happened to be the official Barbie website. www.barbie.everythinggirl.com/
The homepage was bright and colourful with lots of enticing links to many activities. The main colour was pink amongst other very girly colours. It was very much made for girls in mind. Many things moved and there were sounds including music and voices of Barbie and selected pet. The whole website was multi-modal throughout and made reading necessary but fun.

The activity that we chose to begin with was entitled ‘Decorate page’ which gave us the opportunity to choose a Barbie and named her after Marie. We chose her clothing style and her pet from a choice of dog, cat and rabbit. The chosen pet of rabbit followed us around throughout our visit. We also chose the decoration of home page which was Barbie’s lounge.

The main activity was a game in which we had to complete numerous tasks on an adventure to find the wand which would save her parents from being turned into stone by the wicked wizard. The game was colourful and exciting throughout and offered the opportunity to wear 3D glasses with the animations. Each task started with the next part of the story in written text situated at the left hand side of the screen. The writing was of an appropriate mystical font.
This provided a purpose for reading as children would have to read the story in order to complete the adventure. The tasks began with no more than 3 instructions for each game and assisted by an image. We found the most valuable multi-modal activity was where there were hidden letters within the picture and the player had to find these letters to reveal a hidden word, which was part of the clue to win the adventure. This would be easily accessible and useful for the classroom.