Teaching children to write web pages

March - April 1998

During 1996 and 1997 the children prepared work for Internet pages using a wordprocessor and this was cut and pasted onto web pages for them. Now children from 3rd to 6th Grade are creating pages by themselves. Each class has one computer lesson a week of approximately 45minutes. There are 8 classes from 3rd to 6th Grade. Each class has 26-30 children and there is one teacher and 18 computers in the lab.

Here is how we went about it :-

Skills already mastered

Children can type, edit, cut and paste text in a number of wordprocessors.
Children expect to be able to save and retrieve files.
They know how to use the "FIND" button to research in Encarta.

Skills mastered by some but not all children

Windows 95 is new to most of the children this year. They are still learning about using two or more applications at once, and how to read the task bar.
Our network has a different method for logging in this year. The children MUST enter their class code as they log in so that their work will be saved to their shared class directory.
Children must select their class directory when saving. Failure to do this has often resulted in their work being lost somewhere in the system and they have to start again the next week.
Changing the size, font and colour of their writing in Works - this was only begun at the end of last year. Some have done it in Pagemaker or other wordprocessors.

Skills new to all the children

Using FrontPage Editor - changing colours, fonts, sizes
Inserting a picture
Copying an image from Encarta to the Editor - then acknowledging this under the picture.
Inserting a horizontal line and adding the details about the authors of the page.
Inserting and using a table
Using a bulleted or numbered list

Procedure

Free play for 30mins with FrontPage - but after 30mins they had to demonstrate how to change the background colour and the colour of the text. And also change the size of the font.
I had a set of pictures within each class directory. The children had to insert a picture from the list onto a blank page and then write a story to match it, using all the colour and sizing tricks they had learned the week before.
Children learned to copy a picture relevent to their research, from Encarta and immediately type an acknowledgement under the picture. Those who wanted words beside the picture rather than underneath, learned how to insert a table.
Next we started in on making pages for their research topic. Children in one lesson had to put on the Title, a picture, an acknowledgement of source, a horizontal line and their own name and class. Then they could begin entering the facts they knew on the topic.
I explained why we have navigation aids at the top of each page and an email address at the bottom and also why we have a date on every page on our site so visitors can see how recently the page has been revised. The children then had to take a template I had made for their class topic and save it with a new name. They had to open their file from last week and cut and paste their work from there to the new page so that it fitted between the page header and footer. This way, their work matches the style of our particular Internet site.
NOW, the children had their page all framed up and ready for their research facts. Typing those in was really quite quick.
Evaluation - the children had to look at each other's work in Netscape and make helpful suggestions about colour, size, layout, language usage or facts. Each child had to edit their work to make use of these suggestions.

In retrospect

It might have been easier to start from the template.
One class - 3/4D had some other support pages, e.g. "Humans in the Arctic" to add to their project. I was so pleased that these children could in one lesson, start from the template, set up the colouring, enter in the information, get the authors' names in and fix up the date. They then had to save it to disk. It took them less than half an hour and needed very little intervention from me.
Oops! I've just looked at their files and several of them only saved part way through the lesson and forgot to save at the end. I think we still have a lot of learning to do. We'll try again next week. The phone rang right at the end of the lesson when the next class were lining up at the door. This is life! I was not standing over them all to make sure their work was saved!!

Conclusion :

All the pages created this term from the eight classes are links from our library research page.

I feel that the new skills are not really mastered yet. I want the writing of web pages to be the major computer task for each child next term as well so that they become thoroughly familiar with it and can be told by their teacher to sit down and make a web page about ...? and they will be able to do it - and remember to save it!!

The pages for next term will be featuring whatever is the major topic of study for each class. The school theme will be "Human Communities" so I am anticipating a number of class projects on related themes.

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