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Rationale behind mental literacy using keyboard crazy

What is mental literacy?. Mental literacy is a 10-12 minutes activity using a keyboard recognition skills game (keyboard crazy). It is done to cover any aspect of grammar from plurals to connectives through to capital letters and verbs. It is very fast paced and is done as a collaborative exercise. (Groups of 2,3 or 4). It works on four major areas..

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Rationale behind mental literacy using keyboard crazy

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    1. Rationale behind mental literacy using keyboard crazy

    3. Speaking Listening Cementing grammatical knowledge Improving keyboard recognition skills for ICT and across the wider curriculum. (The added bonuses are; extra motivation from the children and pacier lessons from the teacher.)

    4. Where does it fit in? It fits into the word work part of the literacy hour. The first few minutes can be a quick demonstration of the taught concept and then it is on to your mental literacy games. As it is fast and full of pace there is no chance of being bogged down and losing other elements of your hour.

    5. Who Benefits? Because of the nature of the game the benefits are in place for the three learning styles. Audio Learners: They benefit from the discussions that take place, listening to instructions and talking through the choices.

    6. Kinaesthetic Learners: The game offers a ‘hands-on’ experience by placing keys into a plastic overlay board. These children love the ‘doing’ side of this activity. Visual Learners: The game and the keys are brightly coloured and interesting to look at, so there is plenty for the visual learner.

    7. Do I have to come up with my own lesson ideas to play this game? The simple answer is no. There are game ideas that cover key stage 1 and 2, with most areas of grammar catered for. However, after a couple of plays it is a proven fact that teachers then come up with their own ideas. Indeed some of the best ideas on the keyboard crazy website (www.keyboardcrazy.co.uk) have come from teachers after having the game only a week.

    8. How do you play the game? Obviously it is not possible to go through each game but the basic mechanics of mental literacy are the same. Let us take the use of adjectives for example. Round 1 is recognition of the adjective. Teacher reads out a sentence ‘The bouncy ball was thrown over the wall’. Children key into their boards the adjective in the sentence. This is not first-to-finish, each team is given time to key in their word. There are two questions in round one.

    9. Round 2 is the speaking and listening round. A child is asked to come to the front. The teacher presents the child with an adjective. The child then talks about the adjective for 20 seconds without actually saying the adjective. After the 20 seconds is up the teacher says go and it is the first team to key in their word first. When they have done this they put their hands up and the teacher shouts ‘freeze’ to all the other teams. (There are two questions in this round).

    10. Round 3 is all about improving the adjective. As in round 1 the teacher reads out a sentence with an adjective. Teams have to improve the adjective without altering the sense of the sentence. The final round is all about vocabulary extension. Teams are asked to come up with the biggest adjective they can think of. The adjective must be spelt correctly so the bigger the word the more risk that is involved. Teams get one point for each letter in their adjective.

    11. What are the assessments for learning? Teachers can find out amazing things by simply tuning into discussion. If a common error is creeping in during the session that teacher can take note of this and work on this at a later time. Through discussion children are continually assessing what they know, and what they need to know.

    12. What is the hoped for impact? That children’s writing will improve by a third of a level by the end of the trial. (This can’t be done in isolation but as a partner of the other strategies to improve writing skills) The major impact is on children’s motivation in the classroom so that we can produce eager and well motivated learners.

    13. Results so far When this was introduced into Admirals in year 6 results of SATS went from 51%L4 to 76%L4, this result was slightly improved the following year with a larger cohort.

    14. In my present school during an Ofsted inspection the standards in literacy were said to be above average in years 3 and 4 where the idea of mental literacy is used. The previous inspection stated that these standards were below average only 18 months ago. Using mental literacy as part of my literacy lesson Ofsted deemed it good enough to be graded as a 1.

    15. Any questions you can email me at johnbelljr66@hotmail.com Or Telephone Norwich Road School On 01842 753279

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