Google Forms, Calc, Bar Charts and Excel: Data Handling Gets Creative

In the process of doing housekeeping on the PC and at my blog, I have come across a number of partially completed posts waiting for an audience.  So to work, this post outlines a series of activities I used with students in Phase 2 while introducing Spreadsheets for data handling last April. 

Communal Data Collection Using Google Docs

The unit began in class using our Asus netbooks and a Google form I had prepared entitled " A Few of Our Favourite Things."  The form was set up as an online questionaire, with free entry text boxes.  The students accessed the web and followed a prepared link from the VLE to the data entry form.  In pairs the students were encouraged to talk about and then respond individually to a collection of questions around the subject of our favourite things, such as what is your favourite colour/song/football team/subject at school?  Completing the form and pressing submit, automatically updated a Google spreadsheet, that was displayed on screen.  The live data collection was a real draw, as they watched each other's data arrive and the spreadsheet update in real time. Pace in this part of the session was generated by the sense of urgency to submit their information and see it appear before others.  We knew how many students were in class, and so the size of the sample we expected to see.  We could check quickly that everyone had submitted their data by counting the number of rows completed, before closing the "poll" and exporting the data sheets for use table top based activities. When all the data was in the spreadsheet was exported and saved as a pdf file, this was then printed and distributed to groups of students to use as the basis for tallying and data entry.

As a primary teacher, I am familiar with the amount of time that can be taken up with student data collection, as individual students navigate the room, collecting responses by tally.  I like the idea that using this method a range of data was collected relatively quickly, and as a communal act was then available to all following submission.  One of our key questions before engaging with our data sets, must be has everyone responded.  Placing the google spreadsheet centrally to the IWB, the students could see the sheet being updated as data came in,  since the form had been set up so all fields were compulsory, no one could submit until they had completed each field, and then simply counting or tallying the number of respondants visible we could identify who we were waiting for.  Having a range of data available allowed us to use real information in our initial skills teaching activities, and then for students themselves to select from data sets they were interested in to develop their own individual data sets for further exploration.

Rerepresenting our Samples as Frequency Tables

With  the downloaded "spreadsheets" distributed to pairs of students, we worked together on our Netbooks as I modelled, using a projected image of the screen how to create a frequence table using Open Office's Calc spreadsheet. We did this using the same data set.... Our Favourite colours.  The students were shown how to enter text labels in one column, elimnating duplicates as they went, before in the parallel column counting/tallying and recording the frequency of voters for each colour.  These tables were then given a group constructed title, and the cells into which data had been entered were adjsuted for fit, and then formatted with borders. Each student pair then saved their file.

Next the students were asked to choose two data sets from those on the spreadsheet printout and to create frequency tables for these independently, saving their work periodically so the data would not be lost. 

From Frequency Tables to Pictorial Representation

With our data enterd to the Spreadsheet and the tables formatted, we moved on together using the data set we had set up together as our starting point.  Using the chart wizard students were guided through the creation of a bar chart.  As we worked students discussed and were encouraged to add appropriate chart titles, and also axis labels.  We identified which axis was the x and which the y, we discussed what was special about the data represented on these, and appropriate titles and labels for them.  The students were also, shown how to change formatting and how to recolour the columns and bars in the chart.

Students were then left to practice this process creating a set of bar charts for each of the three other data sets they had created.

• Applying really clear and thorough titles for their charts that would help their readers.
• Producing Axis Labels that would inform their readers of exactly what was shown there
• Recolouring the data plots and bars, choosing appropriate colour fills and effects to match the data.

The charts we had created were used to raise questions and respond to them, extending these to look at more than and less than, by comparing frequencies represented using difference models of subtraction to seek out answers.  Drawing on the dynamic functions of the spreadsheet, we also asked, what would happen if... we used the spreadsheet to order data sets, highest to lowest and vice versa, predicting and then comparing our thoughts to the visual representations created as a result on screen.

This process took approximately 3 sessions of an hour each.   Once completed files and charts were upoaded to the VLE, from where they could be accessed for printing out and display.

Moving On: Presenting Pictograms in a Garden

In class the students had been introduced to Calc and Google Spreadsheets, and they had experienced using these tools as part of a collaborative task, to input and collect data remotely and to tally, enter, present and rerepresent data locally. In the final stage of this project however I wanted the students to get creative, considering other elements in chart creation with a spreadsheet environment, that might make our maths more appealing interesting and accessible to a reader.  To do this I used another prepared data set, but this time based on a set of survey data I had available to me around songbird populations in the UK.  For this series of activities the students were given access to Excel, rather than calc which they had been using on the netbook.  We began the session by discussing Excel and comparing it to the other tools they had used. What did they notice about the environment?  What was the same about it and what was different?  For all intents and purposes the tools were largely the same, they were visually a grid, made up of cells arranged in rows and columns.  We formatted the cells, rows and columns in a very similar way.  With these identified, the students were then provided with data sets to enter, and format as before.  We identified the chart wizard tool, and then set to work creating charts based on the data, adding appropriate axis labels and a clear title, with the students recolouring and reformatting the chart.

The students were then asked about the data itself.  How many of these birds had they ever seen?  Where would they expect to see them?  Did the students think it would be possible to create a bar chart that would really draw in their audience, or even wow passers by as they were working?  Could we create a chart that included images of the birds, and set the birds in their natural habitats.  Viewing charts as part of the Multimodal world this would add an additional layer of meaning making to the outcomes.

The students were now engaged in a collect and store task, using an image search to locate individual images of each of the birds in question and one final image of a garden.... A bar chart in a garden...

The students were then encouraged to further explore the formatting tools for their charts, and to apply the skills tha already had from work with Calc.  We made a second version and this time instead of colour formatting bars, used the fill effects button and picture tab to insert individual bird images to our chart columns.  These were then scaled by 1, to create a pictogram type effect. Highlighting the chart area the garden image they had found was then applied as a background to the chart plot area itself.  Very pretty.  However with the images inserted the axis labels and values as well as the chart title were less readable, requiring some further formatting effects to be applied, changing font colours and backrounds became a necessity to make them readable.

The outcomes are very attractive, as well as introducing for me a key aspect to the purpose of data handling the idea that we produce charts and graphs to be read and interpretted.  Like other visual text sources, they are created to help an audience access and interpret them, the more relavant our content to context the more likely we are to portray the meaning we set out to share.  Persuading students to use formatting devices for other reasons than because we can, is a key aspect to helping them understand the roll of such devices, and ICTs offer incredibly powerful and creative ways to do this. In this unit I wanted students to engage with Spreadsheets as a mathematical tool, not only for its pace and dynamic nature in presenting and representing information, but also as a way of managing the process and engaging with charts and graphs as a form of visual literacy.

Thank You South 4

This post is by way of a thank you to the colleagues who attended my workshops at the South 4 Shared INSET Day at Bridge Learning Campus last Friday.    The blog set up for these session is available at http://multimodallit.blogspot.com/ where you can access the starting points and template files shared at the session.

Animals Save The Planet

Loving these animated shorts from Discovery's Animal Planet.  Each clip depicts a diferent aspect of how we can engage with the three R's

• Reduce
• Reuse
• Recycle

Great discussion points, lots of fun but how might they work as starting points for creating your own animated shorts?  How about using Fuzzy Felt or paper cut outs and backgrounds to tell a similar story during a themed persuasive writing unit?  If animals can recycle...

Man of Iron: Silent Movie Presentations From Phase 3

Last term I began working with colleagues and students in phase three, as a member of the Integrated Curriculum Team.  The young people in phase three are vertically grouped 11-13 years old (y6 to 8) students, and Integrated Curriculum Sessions involve them in engaging with cross curricular themed activities, developed around the focussed teaching of Personal Learning and Thinking Skills.

During term 1 we worked primarily on a project based on The Man of Iron, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and his legacy in the Bristol Area.  The Key focus areas were rooted in developing key skills for Independent Learning and Research as well as facilitating situations to promote Team Work and collaboration.  Throughout the term, students explored a number of aspects of Brunel, his life and his legacy, using material from Primary and Secondary sources.  The following are a pair of video outcomes created using Internet based collect and store processes, and our first attempts at using MovieMaker to prepare and share the outcomes of our work digitally. 


In class a number of table top activities were used to prepare and plan the presentations, before using ICTs.

• Inference squares were used to facilitate and support image based reading activities, and ground the raising of questions as starting points for research.
• Mindmapping was used to record and help link and group key ideas collected from a range of text sources, including books, internet based texts, images and the reading of videos.
• Timelines were used to chronologically order and sequence the major events in Brunel's life.
• Desk Top Timelines then formed the planning frame that supported image searches and helped sequence the basic story we wanted to tell using Movie Maker
• Images collected from the web were imported to MovieMaker and sequenced/ chronologically or grouped according to the preferred method of presentation.
• The original intention was to have students record a voice over, so our paper based timelines were developed to become "storyboards" with simple scripts to support this.

As the video creation process evolved we began to think about how we could create video presentations in a "victorian style."  Silent movies/Newsreel arose as a possible idea, and in MovieMaker the credit tools were used to add captioned splash screens between clips.  To give the clips that "olde worlde" feel an aged film effect was applied to many of the individual clips, and music added as a soundtrack.  The students had a great time, and these are just two from our collection.  Hope they provide a little inspiration :o)

Video Attribution: Thanks to George, Maisie, Oliver and Katie

"Its Magic!" IWB Rub to Reveal in a Phonics Session

Friday's are great with my timetable including a day with one of our younger Phase 2 classes.  The students all aged between 6 and 8 are Year 2 and 3 and a lively group.  Their day with me includes a focussed reading session, which for the last couple of weeks has involved using activities to investigate spelling and reading texts and words including the phonemes they have been working on during the week.  To help with this I have begun collecting images from the web, that we can use as a starting point for the sessions.

Some of the phoneme groups I still think are a little obscure, and image collections not easy to compile. This week for example we have been looking at the various graphemes that can be used to represent /er/.  The collection included things like ferns, birds, a teacher, a winner who came first in a race, a collection of words, a Whirlwind and  screen capture of a wordsearch.

The images were used as an introduction to the session, and as a way of re-engaging the students in listening for the sounds they had been learning about, or thinking about what each image might represent within the rhyming groups they were working on.  In addition however the images were also selected to support engagement with the main task, which was to work in pairs on a "phoneme Spotter" activity before sorting and grouping the words according to the graphemes they contained.  I was concerned that some of the words might be unfamiliar to some students, and hence the choice of a fern, though the choice of some images as visual metaphors, such as a flame for burn was also interesting allowing discussion of what fire or flame might have to do with the /er/ sound we were working on.

Previously I have printed or copied the phoneme spotters we are going to use to a smart board notebook, to act as a shared read before asking students to find and code words.  For some reason I decided last week to present the spotter covered by a layer of digital ink, and to make it into a "rub amd reveal" activity.  The students loved it, and were completely captured as the IWB eraser was dragged across the text slowly revealing the text a word or sentence/phrase at a time.  "It's magic!"  seemed to be the common consensus, and the looks on the student's faces who had obviously not seen this before was great.  This week when I was passing the class I was asked if I would be making the computer write stories again.  Moments like this are the kind of thing we live for and I was happy to oblige.

What was really interesting today was  though that element of "magic" remained, the students were now anticipating the text appearing and began to read along with the rubber as the text was revealed.  This offered some interesting opportunities to begin playing with the text,

• skipping on and revealing words later in the text while leaving others preceding it hidden.  Discussing what might still be hidden under the ink before revealing this and testing our predictions.
• Stopping to ask what might come next, before reading and checking our predictions
• revealing a few letters or a few words from the next sentence and asking what might appear next.
• Revealing the initial phonemes and final phonemes and asking which grapheme or sound picture will be under the ink to spell the word we were reading.

Putting the "magic" aside for the moment, engagement with the text in this way prior to the spotter activity, improved student familiarity with it, while the use of the images to begin meant some of the stranger vocabulary had been introduced.  In pairs I asked them to use their own versions of the text to identify the words that contained the /er/ graphemes or sound pictures, and then pulling the group together we began identifying how the /er/ sound could be written and where each grapheme usually appeared in words.


After this, the students were asked to test our ideas and generalisations by soritng the words they had found in a table.  The group was pulled together again for a final review with a "drag and drop" version of the table top task used to sort the words as a class and check against the work we had done.  While discussing how well our generalisations worked.  E.g did "ir" always go in the middle of words, and "er" always come at the end.  From the examples we had the rules seemed to work pretty well, even though I did introduce at least one example from our photos that didn't match, eg shirt, first, girl and bird followed our rule, but the fir tree didn't, however as a rule of thumb it worked pretty well.

I'm sure for many colleagues the structure of this session is more than familiar, however for me what was interesting was

• How use of "Phonic Photos" or text related images helped re-engage the students with phoneme and grapheme groups introduced and even though metaphorical in nature how some of these prompted discussion and inferential work, while also helping introduce visually, unfamiliar vocabulary
  
• How introducing the spotter as a whole class shared text, and in a slightly different way, using digital ink  and rub to reveal techniques opened possibilities to engage students with higher order reading skills such as prediction and deduction based around an accesible and manageable text chunk
• How student response and motvation seemed to increase through the "magic" created by a relatively simple extension of a previous task by the addition of digital ink and use of the rub and reveal technique.

Additional Stick Figures for Pivot

This week I visited students in a secondary phase ICT extended learning session.  The students were using Pivot Stick Animator, to develop short stories following on from previous sessions where they had planned and developed their own background scenery to help them tell these.  As I was talking to one of the students about their work from nowhere there appeared a beautifully crafted jet fighter that flew across the scene, needless to say I came away from the session with a new online space to share and explore. 

Droidz a webspace recommended by this group of students hosts collections of ready made stick figures and effects for use with Pivot, these include creatures, vehicles and weapons, as well as a forum and share space.  Though they may not all be everyone's cup of tea, and the existence of a forum and share space will have esafety considerations for direct use with students, the characters and figures available do provide interesting extension possibilities and variety for the existing set downloaded as part of this freeware tool.

I would recommend however a visit to the site in order that colleagues can review and check out for themselves figures available, and that primary colleagues might like to create collections using those they feel are appropriate to the activities they they want to develop with students, rather than giving free reign. Hopefully this space will make an interesting visit and add an additional tool set to your bookmarks.  Thanks go to the student group who pointed this out to me this week.  Can't wait to read your outcomes.

Revisiting Viewpoints: Working in the Style of Monet

In a previous post, Viewpoints: Working in the style of Monet I presented a learning story, showing how I and a group of Y4 students had used

• images as discussion points around the work and style of the artist
• drawn on these over a number of weeks to sequentially develop graphics using ICTs based on this work

The unit, involved the use of a common graphics package (MS Paint) to construct and manipulate student self created images while also consolidating functional ICT skills.  These include

• limited tool choices to create image elements in the given style. eg spray can and colour pallette
• Select and copy tools
• Introducing and consolidating the "cascade save" process, using save as and "sensible file" names to build a portfolio of progression through each activity, and return points to which we can go if errors are made, and navigation of network drive spaces.
• Understanding how we can use a graphics package to compose images by drawing together elements we create seperately
  
• Using a collection of predeveloped (drafted image) elements and toggling between software instances, through the use of select copy and paste tools to arrange image compositions.
• Explore cause and effect using rotation and flip tools (in Paint) or by extension to use more complex graphic tools, to investigate and explore filters and effects, before choosing images for our final outcome.

Previous units have resulted in students creating "IKEA" style Prints.  Using MS Publisher to import their final image before adding text and printing out their work on the colour laser.  This time around though I am intending to develop an entirely digital outcome by exploring Monet scenes that reflect seasonal change.  Working with KS2 Students the outcome and brief is to use graphics tools and the collect, store, share and prepare process to produce a short animated sequence based on a single viewpoint or landscape that shows how a scene might appear at different times of the year.

How will this be achieved?

Using Microsoft Paint the students will create a landscape, showing skyline, mid and forground and develop a simple tree skeleton motif using the spray can tool to include trunk and branches.  The tree skeleton will be saved as treespring, treesummer and so on.

Drawing on discussions about how trees appear in images representing the seasons, colour choices made by the artist for mood and effect, the students will  develop their own representations of the tree motif during each season considering  colour choices and exploring the effects they can create by layering spray effects. We will maintain a copy of our original tree skeleton motif as a return point, and for later use in the project.

Using the original tree skeleton, students will be encouraged to create a single landscape starting point, by copying and pasting instances of it to the landscape they have created, composing their own particular viewpoint before saving four copies of this, named landscapespring, landscapesummer and so on. 

To each of these landscapes the students will apply the effects  they developed during their exploration of their tree images to show how they think they might appear during each of the seasons.  They might also explore further detailing, eg sky colour effects perhaps through the use of additional painting tools and the undo tool,  while using save as to keep copies.

Digital Outcome

Using Photostory and the images the students have developed I would like them to create a simple morphing sequence of change for their landscape.  They will be encouraged to select 4 of their images 1 representing each season and to import these to Photostory.  These will then be chronologically ordered on the timeline, before applying transition effects and times.  They will be encouraged also to choose one additional image from those created and to add text to this forming a title overlay.  To complete the project they will add a music track before exporting their completed video for addition to either their class or personal blog space within the VLE for review by colleagues and other students.

If readers have any thoughts about how this project outcome might be further developed I would love to hear from you.  In my new role this year I am also working with a number of Key Stage 3 classes and would be interested to hear from colleagues any ideas they may have about how this type of work might be adapted, extended or used as an element within projects for students in this phase of learning.    

Embedables: Jigsaw Planet

Following my previous post about embedables, I came across another that colleagues might find interesting and students fun through my Twitter Feeds. Thanks to ianinsheffield for this. Jigsaw Planet, generates an embedable jigsaw puzzle from an image uploaded to the space and then code to embed either the puzzle itself or a hyperlink to the hosting space. This widget requires the Java Browser Plugin, and the example below was made from an image I had previously downloaded, but

• Can you see what it is or might be without using either the ghost or image tool?
• What clues or evidence make you think this?
• What strategies would you use to solve the puzzle?

Like Ian I was thinking this tool might be an interesting way to promote discussion in class in small groups and pairs or perhaps at home through the VLE, perhaps around a school visit, as a starting point/stimulus for a new topic, idea covered or to be begun in class. How about using it like an IWB hide and reveal activity, encouraging students without using the ghost or image tools to solve the puzzle, gradually building up the mystery image or object, what clues did they use drawing from these discussions to support vocabulary choices. Any other thoughts?

Getting Persuasive: Creating TV Style Advertisements with Photostory

This term we have been working on a science based theme around materials and their properties. To engage our students with cross curicular persuasive writing we decided to adapt parts of this to focus on the "three Rs." Hmmm Back to basics ay! A real vote winner in the past, but in this case not "readin' 'ritin' and 'rithmetic" (though we have done lots of this too) rather the Three Rs in question have been how we can "reduce, reuse and recycle."

Getting Persuasive

We began our literacy unit by reading and reviewing a range of texts, posters, leaflets and letters, and using these to identify features of the text type that drew our readers in. These included visual and layout features such as

• headings
• emboldening
• the use of logos
• slogans,
• and bulleting,

that would identify these text formats as being part of the non fiction genre. Moving on to identify language features such as

• emotive imagery,
• the use of rhetorical questions
• cause and effect and logical connectives.
• and looking at how these devices were used to support the expression of opinion
  

Literacy sessions have taken on a slightly different perspective here focusing on developing and engaging with the "functional aspects" of the text type, and considering

• What persuasive texts look and sound like?
• Who might write these and why?
• and How they work?

It is difficult to be passionate about something unless you have experience of the ideas behind it. In order to give context and purpose to the outcomes we wanted to develop the students were immersed in "topic based activities" beyond the literacy hour to support their knowledge and understanding of the key ideas they would need to engage with in the process of writing.

Persuasive writing is an interesting and complex sub genre, in that even though classified as Non Fiction, texts are constructed around the feelings of an author. They may appear to find their origin in "fact" but are usually driven by the emotions and opinions of an author based on their interpretation of facts as they see them. They may appear to be objective, but usually present only one side of a potential argument. Helping students to understand this, requires that they attempt to put themselves in the shoes of their audience and begin to develop some empathy with the other side of the case, inorder to choose relevant ideas they can express that appeal to both sides or those without their experience.

To help with this and our exploration of the genre we presented a simple "marking ladder" that we could use to help evaluate the texts we engaged with, and that could be unpicked and developed as we worked to reflect the key features of a persuasive text as we saw them. This included ideas presented above, but also set out to frame generically success criteria for the writing outcomes that students would develop later, and that could be used to frame comparison between their work and the texts we had explored. These texts we decided should

• Open with a strong statement of opinion
• Provide 3 key points to support this supported by facts
• Close with a reassertion of the opening statement using either a slogan, an assertion or a question.

Within the overall process of exploring texts and developing our writing, we made audience the key focus for our work. Moving into phase two of the unit we gave the students an audience and practiced and applied the ideas we had been developing through the guided and shared writing of letter to our caterers. This sought to persuade them how composting of food waste was a great idea, giving our reasons why, and inviting a response. We know that many of the materials we discard in school are recycled or reused, but what about our food waste? Our new grounds are vast, so we decided to look at how composting as a process could be used to enhance our surroundings rather than perhaps ending up in a landfill? To make these more "official looking" the students also wordprocessed them, allowing them to use some of the visual features we had discussed to be included during the publishing process.

Working Towards A Digital Writing Outcome

In building up to our final Writing Outcome, which was to produce a TV advertisement or Video Presentation, we also read these British TV advertisements with voice overs by Eddie Izzard and Jane Horrocks, as well as this interesting stop motion project by simondo89 I discovered on You Tube.

Refering back to our Marking Ladder and success criteria for "writing," we investigated how these videos used similar ideas to persuade. The students identified the use of slogans and Logos as key tools to stating opinion and asserting ideas, but also how the use of visuals such as gesture alongside music were used to persuade us that "recycling was cool." We used comparison charts to review the three videos gradually over several sessions, looking at one initially to identify features that supported our big idea. If the advertisements are telling us that recycling is cool how are they doing this? What makes us think or feel this way?

In The Eddie Izzard Example, the voice over was seen as cheeky and quirky, presenting a casual almost throw away idea. We got to this point via the expression by one of my class that the voice over was "idiotic." This invited discussion around what she meant by this, and lead to time spent unpicking the idea and why the voice might have been prersented in this way. In addition students mentioned the type of music chosen, the bright airy look of the scenes, the shiny newness of objects and the fact that the "new everyday objects" presented were highlighted in the video as the cans they were made from. This added to the "coolness" because no one would have anything like them in their homes. The young fellow who was the focus of the story told also had a slinky, casual way about him strutting about the scene, casually casting his can into the recycling bins, and going about his business as if it was everyday. I was really pleased when a number of students after several readings mentioned how the advert also began with the character throwing away his can and ended in the same way... The advert itself was "kind of recycling." As can be seen in the outcomes later, many of the ideas in this video were borrowed as available designs to use in the works that developed as a result.

Looking at the other 2 advertisements we began with these ideas looking for similarities. The Jane Horrocks Advert from the same series used very similar ideas, Here the character from the previous video was seen playing a computer game, skateboarding and collecting points as he collected bottles to recycle. As a result the "coolness" of recycling glass was expressed in almost identical ways, but also afforded the questions around the idea of audience and who the advert might be aimed at? Using clues such as continuity of the central character, the music and visuals we decided that the video was probably directed at us, and how we could persuade our parents and grandparents to recycle. Though the main idea that it was cool, the use of the game perhaps lead us to see how recycling needn't be such a big thing, or get in the way of how we usually behave.

The final stop motion project, I think really excited the students as they had recently done some stop motion work, and could see how this advertisement had been been put together. A fantastic tool in as it turns out for engaging them crosscurricularly with the oft neglected ICT curriculum strand 4 statements around "Reviewing, modifying and evaluating work as it progresses." In this video using simple visual tools such as the recycling symbol, items from the bin, an image of the world, lettering from an old newspaper, and a piece of carefully selected music, a really simple message was transmitted by reusing material that could have been found in our bin to persuade, no voice over just a litter dance using throwaways, slogans and captions. The message portrayed used a number of familiar processes, and as such enabled them to begin drawing on prior learning to begin discussing how this had been achieved. It also began to open up the task we wanted the students to carry out. Helping identify with them the transferable skills we could use from a variety of ICT based processes such as animation, podcasting, video storymaking to contextualise the writing outcome.

Getting Persuasive with PhotoStory

The final phase of our Literacy Project was to make a short TV style advertisement./video presentation aimed at persuading our parents and other adults that we should recycle. For this we decided to use PhotoStory, the reasons for this I hope will become clear as the process is outlined and you view the completed outcomes .

In making the advertisement the children worked in groups of 4.

• Firstly they planned and then scripted their voice overs using the structure and success criteria above.
• Using the script as a frame we used Flickrstorm and Google Images to locate and save 5 images that we thought would support and help express our ideas.
• These images were imported to Photostory and sequenced.
• The text tool was used to place our slogans or key message on the first frame and to add credits to our final one.
• The children then rehearsed there voice overs, considering how they would express their ideas before..
• Using the inbuilt voice recorder and microphones to record each child's contribution over the appropriate image.

I love the outcomes of which these are only three examples. They are starting points on a journey that I feel reflect the children's emergent and growing understanding of how these text types work.

• Slogans and opening statements include ideas like "Don't Turn Away," "Prepare to be Amazed," "Our World Could Look Like This." Attempts to grab attention!
  
• An appropriate choice of Emotive images or bold and borrowed ideas to open and close their advertisements.
• Use of simple cause and effect sequences such as, how composting feeds worms, who feed the birds and this is Good for them and must be "GOOD FOR YOU!"
• and assertions of ideas such as "It is up to you!"
• The sense of fun in the experience from a student perspective is also eveident as they attempt to include features they experienced in reviewing advertisements eg singing part of a script, and how their reading process is developing with experiences from storytelling and podcasting sneaking in as they find themselves inadvertently inferring and improvising through prediction rather than verbatum use of scripts.

These videos were entirely self produced and I feel indicate an increasing understanding of how advertisements use paritcular features to atttract an audience in order to persuade. Underpinning this is the student voice and their rehearsal of concepts and ideas from beyond the text as they work to organise their ideas as sense making structures. They are I think nice examples of first steps in the use of video as an independent tool to express ideas, and as starting points for evaluation and review as we plan the next steps in our learning.

In supporting the development of this unit, the immersion of the students in a theme,

• involving visitors,
• auditing classroom and staffroom bins,
• asking questions around school about what happens to our "rubbish,"
• discussing and exploring how materials can be reused, the process of recycling materials and the possible consequences of not doing so

have developed a sense of ownership around the work we have developed. The students have begun offering their services to help recycle, if other classes sort their rubbish, delivering it to appropriate places around school during break and lunchtimes.

As a result of a "bin audit" from the staffroom this week, students have suggested the need to create posters that offer advice to staff and other students about how they can improve their 3 Rs. Our completed advertisements have been placed on the VLE to share with our parents at home, though not being able to wait it seems one student arrived yesterday, knowing we were about to make our advertisements with a flash drive, so she could take her group's home to share after school. Another student out ill yesterday, but knowing we were going to be making our advertisements yesterday, used photostory on his home PC and sent the result to me by email. The students have clearly been excited and highly motivated by the projects with the images throughout this post reflecting the level of engagement and fun associated with developing the outcomes. Next week following the excitement of this process we hope to launch our campaign a little wider with a first public airing during assembly.

These videos also present themselves not as an end product but rather potential starting points for future work as reference tools for others as well as ourselves. I was privileged last week to experience some of our secondary students working on OCR Nationals coursework, and in addition to use within the Pimary Phase, have begun wondering how as an all through school, these could be used to promote and support continuity and progression, acting as evaluation tools and starting points for older students to evaluate and develop video based projects of their own. The idea of beginning with the work of other students regardless of age, in order to illustrate processes and identify steps for self improvement and development in the quality of outcome would be fantastic. In an all through environment such as ours it would be a really exciting to involve older students taking on and helping to move forward the work of their younger peers, extending work such as this and developing it for their own benefit, while perhaps sharing and presenting new resources that can further enhance the learning and experiences not only of themselves but other students and the colleagues who are learning alongside them. Perhaps in closing my thoughts truly are running away with themselves... However in recycling these videos the Possibilities do seem truly endless.

Looking Into The Past And Playing with Images

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Looking Into the Past: Market Street, Leesburg, VA on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

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I love this idea From Jason Powell pointed out by a colleague on Twitter. In previous posts I have reflected and waxed about how we might use historical images to investigate, locate, discuss and compare modern scenes within a given location. This use of digital photography to embed the past within the modern scene however is a really interesting idea. I like the way the historical landscape is not removed from the scene, but used as integral to it and fits like a missing piece from a jigsaw puzzle. Just pondering how this type of image composition process might be used as part of a digital photography project. How practical it might be to embed it in field trips or orientering type activity.

Being a bit of a Pink Floyd fan, and ambling off track a little as usual, seeing these images and a recent tweat around using ICT to support art projects reminded me of a small scale project with some students a while back using a trial version of Serif Photoplus I picked up at a conference. The project involved creating images in the style of Magritte.

Downloaded scans of paintings from the Internet were used initialy to create template files and masks, where for example in this image the landscape was removed. The painting and window used to form a framing layer. The students used digital cameras to capture views and images from around school including landscapes and objects captured from unsual angles.

Once downloaded to the computer the children chose a frame for their image, and applied filter effects to their own images, before inserting these to the template, and exporting these as jpegs. This video presentation contains the student outcomes from this activity.

Within the National Primary Framework for Literacy there are number of references to using graphic manipulation to apply effects to images either in response to texts or in support of composition through the creation of scenes and settings. Some of these images particularly the landscapes make for strange viewing.

A number of Magritte's images make great starting points for discussion generally, but would also make brilliant talk for writing prompts in developing openers and links to the weird and wonderful in narrative units such as those associated with Fantasy and Strange World Settings. Here are a couple that set my mind a whirring.

• Time Transfixed
• The Blank Cheque
• The Oasis

Playing With iSpring Free

I am looking forward to a bit of time over the next couple of weeks to kick back, unwind, play, write and share some of the things I have been up to recently. I have decided to begin by exploring a tool I was introduced to and shared before Christmas but that in the midst of our move to new premises I have not had time to play with.

The tool is iSpring Free, a downloadable plugin for PowerPoint, that enables the slideshows we create to be exported, shared and displayed as flash video files. I originally came across the tool as a recommended "gadget" by a pilot partner from Netmedia, as a way for colleagues to use an environment they are familiar with to develop multimedia content for the VLE.

With iSpring we initially identified how colleagues could use the tool very simply alongside PowerPoint to create

• photo albums
• simple illustrated texts
• Visual writing prompts and models etc

to support online projects.

The tool could also be used in a similar vain with students to allow multimodal texts they created in Powerpoint, to be published directly to webspaces without their reader needing to download a viewer, or as we have often done in the past, publishing their show as a web page for upload and sharing.

I have used online host spaces to publish and share simple linear shows such as learning stories and those I want to use with colleagues away from site, and either embedding these to my blog or logging on in situ to access them full screen. The functionality of PowerPoint however allows so much more than this in terms of developing content. The inclusion of hyperlinks for example allows navigation to be included, and a multidimensional or layered effect to be added to the shows we produce, allowing us and our readers to explore and move around a show in our own way by travelling directly from one slide in the show to another and back again. This feature is generally lost when we upload files to sites such as these.

iSpring while creating its flash file, maintains the hyperlinks enabling the slideshows to behave as they would in slideshow view in PowerPoint. The slideshows remain navigable. Here are a few examples that I converted today to show what I mean.

This Linear show is a learning story/Documentary developed with students as an integral part of a Creative Partnerships Animation Project a number of years ago. Clicking on each slide or using the control bar allows the reader to move from one slide to another in sequence. The show is rather long, but was presented to the students as behind the scenes look at the project and contextualised as DVD behind the scenes look at the film making process. It was later used as a kiosk show in school and at a a local conference on loop to share the process behind the project developed with students. It may be of interest in its entirity as a learning story in this context as well as a demo of this particular piece of software.


This textured or layered show includes hyperlinks. As you navigate watch out for arrow images embedded on some of the slides. These invite you as a reader to engage and interact with the content, to move to other slides that present development ideas and thinking points based in the page you have just visited and also direct you back to this with another hyperlink. The slides can either be navigated in a linear fashion by clicking the slide, or by clicking hyperlinks the reader can move between slides directly. This show created a number of years ago in PowerPoint was an early attempt on my part to create a layered text, with and for students. This has also been published previously on this blog as a swf file generated using 2create.



This file also a linear presentations, contains three poems developed by groups of students using images from the web to think about similes and set to auto run.



These files developed by students, both use hyperlinks in Powerpoint to navigate the show in different ways. The first was created as an esafety unit outcome with Y6 students scaffolded by by this great online resource from teaching ideas. The second example was created by pairs of Y 5 students as part of a challenge to create a CD ROM style book for younger students based on the Non Dialogue based Narrative Bert.





It has been great this morning while looking for files to play with to revisit earlier works, and through experimenting with iSpring to give a new lease of life to some of them, and to display them as I would have originally liked to share them. It has also been useful to begin extending thoughts about how tools such as this can open new paths for old tools, thoughts and ideas.

UK based colleague at porchester has been using iSpring as a tool to help his students publish developed content to their school's blog based web site, and says

Particular favourites of mine from the work presented here are poems such as this based around snowfalling. The power of this for me lies in the multimodal nature of the presentation. Moving beyond text and images, the animation effects applied to the text, with the addition of sound add much to the overall atmosphere and depth of the piece. Very cool.

This is a tool I think I will have to come back to some more this week.

BECTA Filming, Podium and Oral Storytelling.

This week we were visited by a film crew commissioned by BECTA to document our use of Softease's BETT award winning software tool and podcasting platform Podium. The wider publication of which this is part will include other schools and tools who won awards at this year's BETT show.

I have made much previously of my commitment to using Podium as a platform for developing and supporting literacy across the curriculum, because of the effect I feel it has had as a tool on the confidence of my students as writers and readers for purpose and meaning. This has also taken me on a reflective journey exploring the pedagogical value the tool has added as a

• writing tool
• scaffold for writing
• and supporting frame for performance and evaluation of outcomes.

In the multimodal world that we live in I feel the distinction between what we traditionally call reading and writing is becoming increasingly blurred, as I begin to unpick the relationships between modes of representation used and their potential for supporting and developing other more traditionally text types. Providing a challenge to what these processes look like in everyday practice and use, and increasingly providing a context where text development as a process can be seen as design as well as composition. I decided for the session to be filmed this week that I would draw on and try to pull together some of my thoughts, building on and using the ongoing activities of my students using visual storytelling devices to develop the tasks they would engage with.

On Monday we had just begun phase two of a unit of work around stories from other cultures, which is being iteratively designed as part of our wider theme about life in India It is intended to help our students learn about Hinduism as a major world religion contextualised in its country of origin. This week we were beginning to apply experiences from phase one, where we had spent sessions engaged with talking as readers around a number of Hindu stories, including the Ramayana, and for the day of filming I decided to set up a carousel of experiences using mixed tools to engage the children in a variety of visual and oral storytelling activities.

Activity 1 oral Storytelling with Podium

Prior to this session the students had created story maps and begun thinking through structured talk about how, when they write they could link the passage of their stories together. They had added their opening phrase to the story, eg Long ago and far far away... and begun thinking how their story might end. We had also talked about how in the oral tradition of stories, these frequently change over time, so the original tale may be very different to the one that was told when first written down to become a standard. This had been reflected in the different versions of the Rama and Sita story we had heard.

We have begun to use more widely work from recent CPD sessions to encourage oral storytelling as part of our talk for writing process. "Overlearning" of narratives, seems to help us develop a coherent plot for a story, enabling us to engage with the details of what characters might be doing within scenes that surround the events, and knowing the plot so well we have less incidences of "we don't know what to write." The problem within the wider scheme of things is that oral rehearsal of stories is usually transient and lost. “Evidence of outcome” existing only in the pictures we have drawn, and the long gone spaces between us and our friends. I have been worried for sometime about how I can evidence this to satisfy the observer, and so for this session set up Podium as part of a thought experiment to help.

Within the activity, the children worked in pairs first of all to set up podium to create a paired "podcast." Using the chapter tool, the children were encouraged to split the story they were about to tell into a number of sections coinciding with the stages in their story maps. In terms of writing this probably best equates to the planning of paragraphs or “boxing up” the plot. The story maps contained only limited text, the linking notes the students had made, around specific vocabulary choices they would like to include, and was to be told entirely without written text support.

Before beginning their recordings the children were encouraged to rehearse aloud each step in the story as a separate chapter (oral paragraph). In this way the children could edit each chapter after play back, considering use of author voice and how they might build on this in the next section of the tale.

• Were they happy with their use of expression?
• Was it interesting to listen to?
• How could they improve this?
• What additional story language might they need to include to help this?
• How would they connect this part of the story to the next and so on?

The children were challenged by the process and really enjoyed it. The outcomes were lovely not only to listen to but also to see how the students reacted to what each other had "written."

Thinking about the overall process in retrospect, has provided an interesting perspective on the “rereading” process, since in this activity the reader's and teller’s voices became merged to form an audible author's voice. In the coming week we will be beginning to write our own versions of the Rama and Sita story, and as we work I am considering how to use the outcomes created by the students in Podium to help focus on the “writer's tools” that will to allow our readers to hear what we want them to. Using the oral text delivery of one student we could “box up” the story plot as a whole, one which through oral rehearsal the students are now familiar with, before using elements from the "oral" text to support guided and shared writing in the form of paired work. Part of our already established success criteria is how we want the student's characters to have a voice, but that the things that they say should be appropriate to them and their situation. Hearing what they say through the stories presented should be useful in identifying not only what we want them to say, but also in discussing whether the dialogue is apropriate to the situation and in considering the choice of speech verbs to be included, that willallow the reader to hear our intention.

Towards the end of the day I was interviewed and given the opportunity to express some of my thoughts about how the tool has been used in school and the effects I feel podium has had on the learning of my students. I hope that the outcomes of this reflect my feelings, and do some justice to the power of the tool. I know by this point in the day I and the children were exhausted. I would like to thank both BECTA and Softease (Lightbox) for the opportunity to share my thoughts and feelings.

Other activities that went on in class during the day were also linked to the ongoing unit of work and included

Activity 2. Even Potatoes have feelings an introduction to Clay Animator

Here a pair of laptops had been set up using clay animator and webcams to encourage exploration and familiarisation with the software tool to make an animated short entitled even potatoes have feelings. After a brief introduction the children were encouraged in small groups to explore how the tool worked building on prior experiences of using Stick Figure Animator. Using a potato, cocktail sticks and modelling clay,the challenge was to change the smiling features of the character into a face displaying a a change in mood. The reason behind this may seem a long way from the overall theme of the other activities, but hopefully will become clearer when combined with activity 3.

Activity 3 Making Stick Puppets

For this activity the children were provided with stick puppet characters from the Ramayana to decorate and assemble. Each puppet provided consisted of a number of pieces to be decorated, cut out and then assembled to construct the four key characters from the story. Possessing articulated limbs, these characters will later be used against backdrops created by the students in groups, to create short scenes that will be compiled to make a class movie. Using clay animator with these props I want to link their prior experiences with stick figure animator and immersion in the Rama and Sita story to begin exploring the differences and similarities between the flick book and stop motion approaches of the two packages.

The potato head activities, presented in (2) alongside immersion in the story of Rama and Sita will provide examples and talking points will also help us identify issues for later work when we consider planning our class movie,

• establishing and framing scenes,
• working together to develop these
• establishing success criteria for our outcomes

Earlier Posts on Podium and Student response

• How Has Podcasting Helped Me With My Learning?
• Talking for Writing: Using a Picture Book as a Multimodal Text To Develop a Script for Podcasting
• I'll Be The Narrator, And You Can Be Baby Bear...
• So what do you think the children get from Podcasting?
• I Had My Doubts...

Great Multimodal Starting Points for Writing -Text Number 8 and 9

Would like to take credit for finding this movie, but I found it as a suggested tool on the Lancashire Grid For Learning's, website as frame and starting point for a unit of work on explanatory texts. The Shirt Machine by Jon Davis. Also on the Lancs site is a suggested plan for developing work around the video, linked to the new framework for Primary Literacy's longer unit structure.

get The Shirt Machine in HD on sph3re.tv

While thinking about this post a number of other possible digital texts began to spring to mind that could be used as talk for writing frames with this genre, in explaining processes.These include personal favourites such as Wallace and Grommit's Gracking Contraptions by Aardman's, that were included on The Curse of The Were-Rabbit DVD release, but can also be found as part of this Aardman Playlist onYouTube.

In reading, thinking about and comparing types of explanatory texts, we also used a downloaded CommonCraft video, displayed on a laptop in class, as part of a carousel task today. Encouraging the students to use this alongside marking ladders to identify features used in this presentation type and to begin comparing it with other written explanations.

6 Great Multimodal Starting Points for Writing

Have had a great afternoon browsing, rereading and bookmarking some of my favourite Mulitimodal and Visual Texts. I bookmarked these on Delicious, but have also decided to share them here with the notes I jotted as I went and in order to provide back links to a couple of previous posts where I reflected on the use of a couple.

YouTube - Bert - Moon Sung Lee
Animated story, dialogue free narrative. Great for multimodal reading actvities and talk for writing. Previous Post Spot the Inference.

YouTube - Kiwi! - Don Permedi
Another great dialogue free narrative. Suggested uses by visitors include support for framing y5 narrative units either alongside or instead of the piano.
Links to previous Post: Kiwi by Don Permedi

YouTube - Geri's Game From Pixar
Another useful story for prediction, inference, freeze framing and discussing feelings from Pixar

YouTube - Mike's New Car From Pixar
Some fantastic moments in this movie for freezeframing, discussing thoughts and feelings through exagerated gesture? Just what was going through Sully's mind before he replied to Mike's question? What did he realy think about his new car?

YouTube - DIVX version of Birds Short from Pixar
Not entirely dialogue free but what what might be being said? Just what is going on here? How do the characters respond to each other and the arrival of the larger bird? What do the small birds think of him, and how de we know? Can we create a sense of atmosphere, using clues from action and gesture? What might a human voice over for this film sound like?

YouTube - Michael Dudok De Wit - The Monk and the Fish
A dialogue free narrative, useful for talking about the structure of film, scene setting and camera shots, framing and angle. See reference on Teachers'TV
Reading Film: The Lesson
Reading Film: The Monk and The Fish

Wordling The Iron Man: Reviewing my story visually

This morning I have been fiddling with my Iron Man Story with Wordle. I have made no alterations to it as a result, but wondered what visual pointers I might be able to pick out for improvement, by playing with the text and some of the tools on the site . Here are two versions of the story, as generated in different ways by the Wordle environment.

This image of my story was generated using the language menu, where I asked the tool to include all words from the text I had generated, in the word cloud. The variations in text size indicate the frequency with which words were used in my story, and as you can see the most common words used here are

• the
• to
• his
• and

Perhaps in sharing this image with a friend, or through projection as a class, my thoughts could be directed to reread what I have written, considering as I go the connectives and sentence openers I have used. I have a number of students who still regularly use "and" to join episodes in a story, and whose texts can appear list like as a result. Using Wordle in this way with them might be useful as a tool to highlight this, perhaps asking them to consider using "and" as an indicator of a sentence end, or to review their texts and consider other possible connectives to replace this as they revise their text.

It is easy to get bogged down in the word level and sentence level structure of the text, and as a writer I should also be concerned about how my audience hears my voice and what I intend to communicate, the meaning I want to make, the images I want to share. The variation in my word choice and use of adventurous vocabulary and sentence structure will be indicative of this, and how well I have achieved my goals. So revisiting the language menu I set the tool to remove common English words from the cloud, to have a look see.

Don't know about you but actually I'm really pleased with this, I know I wanted to use some similes in my story, because Ted Hughes, my model, used these a great deal as comparative descriptive devices. The word Like is highlighted and knowing I was writing in the 3rd person, and past tense, I am more likely to have used this word as a comparative than a description of how the character was feeling about something, indeed had I done so the verb would have ended in "ed" to indicate this I hope. In addition throughout the cloud are a variety of adjectives and verbs, all of which are around the same size so I have not been repeating myself overly. On a word level the clouds seem to suggest that I am quite good at this writing lark, so perhaps my next step will be to review my work against the wider features of the Genre I am writing in.

As a tool for reviewing my own writing, I have enjoyed using Wordle to visually evaluate the tone and feel of my work. While writing my recent MSc Dissertation I checked each chapter in Wordle, to ensure that the key messages were included and that they focussed on particular aspects, by reviewing the Vocabulary they contained. Here on a more professional level, I have begun to use and explore the tool considering teaching points arising from my own exploration of the text type I would like my students to engage with. The final outcome of the unit will involve the students in preparing onscreen versions of the story for inclusion in their animated books, and use of onscreen "dulled texts" as models and frames. In reviewing student outcomes and encouraging self evaluation and improvement the visual nature of the text representation here could be incredibly useful as a support.

On a slightly different note, I am also wondering about wordle as a tool for presenting the outcomes of talk for writing. During Visualisation tasks, where tasks such as "burst Writing" or the creation "word showers" might be a transient outcome on whiteboards, Wordle could provide extension opportunities for students to engage semiotically to present outcomes for display, perhaps considering how colour, font style and cloud shape effect the tone of the collections they have made.

Other Wordle Posts

• Wordle: Thinking About Time Poems and Calligrams
• Cleversheep's Top 20 Ideas For Using Wordle

Where had he come from? Nobody knows

Ted Hughes' The Iron Man, subtitled a Bedtime Story in 5 nights, is a text I have drawn on time and again with students, as a story, a focus for literacy tasks and as a starting point for thematic Science and DT work.

If unfamiliar the text is a fantastic resource drenched in poetic devices that set scene and create atmosphere. My favourite part of the story is without doubt the opening chapter, that uses simile and rich description, to build up the story, as the central character emerges from the sea with "a head like a bedroom" and "eyes like headlamps" to explore a sibilant and onomatopoeic sea shore washing scene, before crashing from a cliff to the beach below.

If you haven't already then this book is a must read. The animated movie The Iron Giant, although a cracking multimodal yarn and based on the characters in the book contains none of the original's content, though could be used in parts to support the idea of an alternative beginning to the story.

This term we are working to write a narrative text to be developed around the Iron Man as a unit of work on stories set in imaginary places, and rooted in the Sci Fi genre. The outcome will be multimodal and based on the writing of a prequel, stimulated by the opening lines from this story,

How far had he walked? Nobody knows.

Where had he come from? Nobody knows

And one we hope will contextualise our Design and Technology work to create a "pop up" or "animated story book."

As we prepare to start the planning and modelling phase for writing, building on talk for writing tasks, the sharing of the story as a serial, our investigation of other texts, images and the collection of vocabulary, this week in our big write the students were encouraged to have a go and draft their thoughts about what might have happened to the Iron man before Ted Hughes' story began. This will be developed through modelled writing activities a paragraph at a time, using the "box up" method, we were introduced to recently, and based on this story as a model.

Although quite florid, after sharing with the students, this story as a frame will be cropped back into a series of dull structures, for use to scaffold the writing process, and as a model that some of our more reluctant writers can draw on, to develop their own ideas. For others it will act as a means to explore the ideas of setting a scene, developing a build up, presenting a problem, creating a resolution before presenting an ending that links to an upcoming chapter or instalment (something we will engage in during later units of work as we move towards writing chapter stories later.)

As a model I hope it will provide opportunities and stimulus for the students to innovate on a theme, to respond critically, and stimulate further their how their own stories could be improved or might be developed.

Here then is my prequel to the story. If you like it and want to use it please do. Please do return to share your comments either on the response of your students or your thoughts and ideas around other ways you have used or developed it. Thank you.

The Coming of the Iron Man (An alternative beginning)

Hurtling through space, a sleek metallic object shot towards the scrap mines of Germania. Inside the Intergalactic transport ship, Tesca, everything was running smoothly and the solitary pilot made one final check. The banks of still green lights on the control panel and gentle hum of the engine, showed it was safe to go. Turning on the automatic pilot the creature set off toward the gyrolift, to prepare his cargo bay and transporter for the job ahead.

Suddenly the calm was disturbed by a high pitched whine and flashing red lights on the control panel. Spinning around the metal man, spotted a strange object in the centre of the view screen. His enormous eyes like headlamps, changed from green to amber as he realised that roaring towards him like a rocket was a vast space rock. Calmly he walked back the way he had come. Sitting down, he quickly changed course, hoping to steer away from the object's path, but to his shock and horror with every change in course the rock seemed to follow his every move. His eyes changed from amber to red as he realised that his attempts to escape the rock, had brought him dangerously close to a sleeping small blue green planet that was now directly in the meteor's path. Not one, not ten, not one hundred but millions of creatures were now in danger because of his decision to take the shortcut. What should he do? How could he put right this selfish decision?

Bravely the Iron Man parked his craft between the meteorite and small blue marble. He set the rescue beacon, strapped himself into his escape pod, and pressed the button, that sent him racing towards the planet far below where he hoped to hide and await rescue. Spinning through the starfilled sky he watched helplessly but hopefully through the porthole as the meteorite exploded into the side of the Tescas.

Fortunately his plan seemed to work, and as his craft disappeared glowing into the atmosphere, he watched relieved as the Tescas and rock span safely away from the earth like a Catherine wheel. Now he and the people of the planet were safe, the Iron Giant steered his lifeboat towards a crash landing in the planet's vast oceans. Groggy after his crash landing he checked that all was safe outside his capsule. He released the hatch and shakily and uncertain of what was to come he headed for land. Crawling and staggering ashore he started his search for somewhere safe to repair his injuries.

"How far had he walked? Nobody knows.

Where had he come from? Nobody knows. How was he made? Nobody knows."

Original Story Attribution: The Iron Man by Ted Hughes
Image Attribution: Get Glasgow Reading
The Iron Man on Love Reading4kids