Teaching the correct use of omissive

apostrophes in Year 4 using

multimedia software
Over time she has discovered the best way to improve your
The school
ICT skills is to use it for something which requires more skill
Situated in a residential area north of a major northern city than you currently possess.
this Voluntary Aided Church of England school provides
schooling from reception to Year 4. On entry pupils have "You nearly always find that if you have a project,
good communication and social skills. By the time pupils something meaningful, that’s where you learn. In other
leave school, at the age of nine, attainment in English, words, if you’ve got a school magazine to produce, you learn
mathematics, science, music and information technology is the skills that are necessary to do that. Learning skills
well above average. without then having the need to put them into practice is a
waste of time."

The teacher
The pupils
The teacher has been teaching at the school for ten years and
has taught Years 2 and 3 in addition to Year 4. As ICT co- Before the project began the pupils had been carrying out
ordinator she has been instrumental in moving ICT forward work on using apostrophes correctly. The teacher had used a
within the school. She enjoys a close working relationship number of different strategies which did not use ICT to teach
with colleagues and values the contacts made while this aspect of word and sentence level work but found, after
attending in-service courses. She comments on the fact that: testing, that more than half the class had failed to
understand the use of apostrophe especially when used for
"When attending a course I like to come back inspired with omissions or contractions. Given the amount of input which
new ideas to put into practice." had taken place (for example whole class teaching,
individual worksheets, homework and even a demonstration
When using ICT she is always conscious of the links that are using a feather duster to ‘tickle out’ letters) the teacher was
required into other subject areas and never teaches ICT in rather surprised at the test results and keen to make use of
isolation. She is keen to point out that: ICT to try and improve the children’s understanding. Could
"Although I favour using the computer, unless I have ICT help them move from ‘will’nt’ to won’t?
planned to use it to meet specific learning objectives you
will probably find my computer switched off." The aim of the project
This project aimed to move pupils’ understanding forward in
Alongside using ICT in the curriculum she makes good use the use of the apostrophe. The teacher was keen to involve
of the technology for planning, recording, reporting and all the children in the use of ICT and not just those who
creating resources. Having access to the Internet at home has were struggling with the correct usage. It was decided that
proved invaluable in literacy hour preparation. She is in addition to using the ICT to improve apostrophe usage a
enthusiastic about sharing resources across the Internet and program would be used which would also stretch their ICT
hopes, in time, this will result in more creative and exciting skills and contribute to their IT capability. Many of the
teaching. children have computers at home and as a consequence some
pupils had high levels of ICT skills.

Effective pedagogy using ICT in literacy and numeracy in primary schools

2 Ways forward with ICT: Developing literacy

was made clear to the children that although the final

product would appear on the computer the majority of the
work would take place away from the computer. This did not
in anyway dampen their enthusiasm.

How the teacher developed the

project
The teacher used a brainstorming session to get the project
underway. The children were asked to come up with ideas on
how they might teach the use of apostrophes to other pupils.
Initially they could only come up with "test them". Further
discussion led by the teacher produced more useful ideas
Screen from the ‘Apostrophe Stack’. with the children agreeing that if they could establish some
rules and examples this might work. Discussions also took
place about presentation with the children deciding they
The teacher’s choices wanted a ‘character’ who appeared when help was
The teacher had used a multimedia program in the past to requested. Many other ideas were forthcoming, some
support a project on Ancient Greece. She had been impressed discarded, others making their way into the final
with the work the children contributed to the project both at presentation.
and away from the computer. However, this program had
proved difficult for some of the children to use and not all
were able to take part in the computer activity because of
the ICT skills demanded by the program. With its ease of use
a newer multimedia program renewed her enthusiasm. She
was convinced that these pupils would rise to the challenge;
especially a challenge where there would be a wider
audience and purpose for their work.

Given the disappointing results of their initial apostrophe

test the teacher thought they could both enhance their ICT
skills and improve their understanding of the apostrophe by
creating a multimedia presentation to teach other children
about correct apostrophe usage. She thought that getting Screen showing the ‘character’ competition winners.
them to identify how to teach aspects of correct usage would
develop their awareness and understanding of how to use The teacher organised a ‘character’ competition where all the
apostrophes correctly themselves. pupils submitted a drawing; the drawings were all displayed
with pupils voting for their top three. This enabled the
The teacher chose to use HyperStudio, a multimedia program whole class to work on the project at the same time and
which allows pupils to mix text, graphics, sound and video increased the motivation for the task as well as supplying a
so that the pupils could consider how to communicate their deadline for completion. In additional sessions children
ideas effectively. As the teacher had never used this package worked on colour schemes, and planned the layout of the
before she was enthusiastic about learning alongside the ‘stack’ (the series of multimedia pages which made up the
pupils. presentation). They also agreed on what the rules might be
for omissive apostrophes (e.g. it’s and didn’t but not
It was explained to the children that they were to produce a children’s which is an example of a possessive apostrophe)
multimedia presentation which could be used by other and came up with hints, tips and examples of use.
children to help them understand the use of apostrophes. It The session with the children where they finally decided on

Effective pedagogy using ICT in literacy and numeracy in primary schools

 Ways forward with ICT: Developing literacy 3

the rules is worth particular consideration. It involved the teacher was motivated to use this program because she
children in word level work distinguishing uses of the wanted to improve her own ICT skills. Learning with the
apostrophe as well as sentence level work identifying children is something she enjoys and felt this was an
patterns in how apostrophes were used. In pairs the children excellent opportunity to develop her own ICT skills.
were given a list showing the original two words followed by
the contraction e.g. your are - you’re. They were asked to use The teacher used ICT as a vehicle to encourage the children
colour pencils to highlight groups which they thought were to work as a team. Although the stack was considered by the
similar. Many children looked at the number of missing children as the final result, for the teacher it was the
letters and created a grouping this way. Others came up with thinking that had gone into establishing the rules, agreeing
more sophisticated patterns. Once they had finished, a whole the examples, hints and tips and working collectively as a
class discussion took place on what the groups had found class that was important. In moving their understanding of
and finally a consensus was reached which everyone agreed omissive apostrophes forward, the work that had taken place
to and understood. away from the computer was more important than what had
actually been achieved using the computer.

As the project unfolded the teacher became increasingly

aware of how complex the teaching of this particular aspect
of word and sentence level work was. The teacher was
impressed with the quality of discussion which took place in
the whole class sessions and with the effort the children put
into trying to make meaning for other students. As with her
project on Ancient Greece she felt it was the creation of
multimedia and the preparation work which that entailed
which had benefited the children’s learning and not just the
use of the technology. The teacher is not convinced that the
use of the completed stack would necessarily move other
Screen showing some of the pupils’ rules. children’s understanding of apostrophes forward, though the
children could have used it to try it out on their peers.
The teacher thinks that encouraging the children to
formulate their own rules for apostrophe proved a powerful The class had the use of an additional computer for the
teaching strategy: duration of the project however, this second computer, while
a bonus for writing and painting, was not in fact used for the
"Asking the children, rather than telling them that ‘this is
development of the final stack. The teacher is quite happy to
the rule’, ‘it always does this’, is more powerful. Asking
work with a single computer on a project such as this.
them, in groups, to find the rules and report back in a
plenary session is a good way to get them to focus upon a
particular aspect."
The results from the testing
Only at this stage did work begin on the computer. The Before the project began the teacher had administered her
children had assistance with some aspects of the stack but own test, after considerable teaching of the correct use of
were confident in adding pictures, sound, linking pages and apostrophes, to determine pupils’ understanding. It was
creating simple animation. The completed stack was decided that the same test should be administered on
demonstrated to parents, governors and other members of completion of the project. The graph below shows the
staff who were suitably impressed with the pupils’ original test score together with the test scores obtained, by
understanding of creating multimedia presentations as well the children, at the end of the project. The teacher was very
as their knowledge of apostrophes. satisfied with the improvements made by the children on
The ICT had acted as a catalyst for the class. They worked this test. However results from the writing task indicate that
enthusiastically together on what is potentially a rather dry only some of the children were able to convert their
subject. In addition to using ICT with the children the improved test results to corresponding improvements in

Effective pedagogy using ICT in literacy and numeracy in primary schools

4 Ways forward with ICT: Developing literacy

using omissive apostrophes correctly in their general writing. effectively not only when to use ICT to improve literacy, but
also when not to use it.
While it is not possible to say that using ICT was directly
responsible for the improvement in test scores, the results do The teacher also wished to develop her own ICT skills as
suggest that ICT activities with clear literacy objectives can part of the work with the children. She feels her new skills
contribute to improving pupils’ understanding of aspects of can be put to use in other areas of the curriculum. As a
punctuation. consequence of being involved in the project she feels much
more confident about making use of ICT in the literacy hour
Features of ICT both for whole class teaching and for use by the children in
their group work.
While creating their multimedia presentation the children
were making use of the speed and automatic functions of the
As the work progressed she realised that the teaching of
program. They were controlling the presentation with the
apostrophes was more complex than she had previously
use of navigational buttons and creating text frames which
thought and that this perhaps explained some of the
allowed speech feedback. In addition the pupils used other
difficulties she had experienced in teaching this aspect of
buttons to automatically display text and images, play
word level work before. For example even omissive
recorded speech and create animations.
apostrophes are complex. Some follow a pattern such as
didn’t and wouldn’t but then other similar contractions, such
The children were able to make use of the provisionality
as won’t; don’t follow this pattern. The approach she took
which ICT offers when they made changes with ease. For
enabled her to understand the difficulties the children were
instance if a card in the stack was not in the correct order
having and in using this knowledge to improve their
the program allowed the children to change the order simply
understanding.
by dragging the card to the correct place.

Summary Further Reading

Troutner, J. (1996) Yes they put on quite a show but what
In this project the teacher was able to use ICT effectively as a
did they learn? Technology Connection, Vol 3, p. 15-17.
catalyst in teaching a challenging aspect of word level work.
The work was planned around the computer. However, less This article looks at the development of a framework to
work was undertaken by pupils actually using ICT than in assess multimedia projects.
whole class and group sessions where ICT was not used.
Waugh, D. (1998) ‘Practical approaches to teaching
Although this was in part due to the fact that the class have
punctuation in the primary school’ Reading 32 (2) 14 - 17
only one computer permanently available, the teacher would
choose to repeat the activity in the same way because of the Collins, J., Hammond, M. and Wellington, J. (1997) Teaching
quality of work the children produced without using ICT in and Learning with Multimedia, London: Routledge
the whole class and group sessions. She was able to choose

Results from the teacher’s apostrophe tests

14

12

10
No. correct
(Max. 14) 8

2
The teacher prepared a test to see how effective
0
her teaching had been. This chart shows how
successfully the pupils learned the correct usage of
Pupils 1st test
apostrophe before and after the work they did.
2nd test

Effective pedagogy using ICT in literacy and numeracy in primary schools