@PIOE News and Views
November News
There has been a lot of information from the University at large recently. Please feel free to book a time in with me if there is something that particularly concerns you, or you need to ask questions about.
Can I remind everyone that leave cards need to be filled out? Sometimes it is easy to underestimate the effect on others when this isn't done.
Visiting Scholar
Children's writing in 21st Century
On November 25th Dr Clare Dowdall was invited to the University of East Anglia (UEA) to present a research seminar on the topic of children’s writing in the 21st Century. The seminar was well attended and well-received by members of staff from the School of Education and their graduate students. Clare is interested to develop this work. Please contact her if you might be interested in discussing ideas further:
Children’s text production in the 21st century: mastery, crafting and control
Taking an holistic view of text production in the ‘new media age’ (Kress, 2010), and building from a recent doctoral study, this paper will propose a framework for examining how pre-teenage children behave as text producers in social networking sites. To build this framework, data that describes children’s profile page construction in the social networking site Bebo will be presented. Based on this presentation, consideration will be given to how children can endeavor to achieve control, achieve social positioning, enact the role of text producer and derive pleasure as they create their own texts. Set alongside the statutory requirements for writing that are currently presented within the National Curriculum in England - English programmes of study: key stages 1 and 2 (DfE, 2013), this framework articulates a model of text production as a form of mastery that involves spectrums of crafting and control, and which can be regarded as at odds with the notions of composition articulated in curricular documentation. This paper will conclude by considering whether the framework proposed might have relevance for those with responsibility for supporting young people to become text producers in the age of 21st century literacies.
Lanterns for celebration
The year 3 A&D specialists were invited to work at Montpelier Primary School, Plymouth, by ex Plymouth University student, James Carhart, to go along and work with 120 year 3 children making lanterns as part of a workshop led by Iain Slade from 'Stiltskin Arts'. The lanterns were made from willow and tissue paper and the children had designed logos based upon the storytelling theme explored in their literacy lessons. The plan was for children to each make and decorate their own lantern to use in an evening celebration of music and storytelling on Friday 27 November. The whole lantern-making day was a huge success and the students thoroughly enjoyed and valued the opportunity to see exciting, community art and design / design technology project work in action. James expressed his thanks to the students saying the school would not have been able to do such an ambitious project without all the extra pairs of hands plus the children really enjoyed working with our enthusiastic, talented Art and Design students.
I can't thank you and the Art students enough for the help and support you gave us on Wednesday, we really couldn't have done it without you! The lanterns look amazing and the children are all excited about the parade tonight. (James Carhart)
ESRC Festival of Social Sciences: Sustaining language learning: developing global citizens
by Jan Georgeson, Claudia Blandon and Benji Rogers
November 7th 2015
Building on findings from a recent research project,
http://www1.plymouth.ac.uk/research/ihc/Pages/Current-Projects.aspx
we decided to put on an event to highlight the benefits and enjoyment of learning another language. Children and families were offered opportunities acquire new language skills ‘by stealth’, as a pupil in one of our project schools put it, by taking part in enjoyable hands-on activities (cooking, acting, singing and dancing). They also heard about the benefits of learning another language for future careers and we hoped these experiences, together with meeting up with speakers of other languages here in the Plymouth area, would help them to feel more connected to people from other cultures.
Organising the event was challenging, as our original plans had to be revised with only a couple of weeks to go, but we had fantastic support from university services, music students and international students. Even on the day itself, our organising skills were tested to the limit as we had to relocate the whole event from the marquee to the top floor of Rolle.
But in the end we were very happy with the final version of the event. The ‘languages are all around us/languages are fun/languages are useful’ messages came across well and over 100 people attended the event, including speakers of Spanish, Hungarian, Czech, French, Danish, Greek, Arabic and German - and English. We have made connections with an Early Years group hoping to develop multilingual sessions for young children, as well as the Children’s University here, and have plans for future projects.
So many thanks to everyone who helped us; it was certainly worth it and we’d definitely recommend applying to put on your own event next year.
Plymouth Institute of Education
Location: NAB, Plymouth University, Drake Circus, Plymouth
Phone: 01752 585300
Twitter: @PlymIOEtwittercom