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Making Web Pages - Part 3
(by Mark Warner)
What can children put
on their web pages?
The great thing about web
pages is that they can contain text from almost all types
of genre. Children can make on-line versions of
newspapers, recounts, reports, stories, instructions and
of almost any other kind of text. Here are some ideas for
activities which you might want to try - each activity is
related to one kind of genre:
| Persuasive |
Children could make their own company web
site to persuade visitors to purchase their
fictional products. |
| Recounts |
Children could report on school events,
perhaps in the form of a school newspaper. |
| Information
Reports |
Publish information relating to topics which
they are learning about in class. |
| Stories |
Publish their own stories on the Internet -
e.g. KS2 children could publish a collection of
stories for younger children. |
| Procedures |
A set of instructions, showing visitors how
to do something - e.g. looking after guinea pigs,
make something which they have themselves made in
school. |
| Explanations |
If they have made something in DT, they could
explain how it works. Links with Science -
children could explain different scientific
phenomena. |
| Discussion |
A discussion of local environmental issues,
school-related issues. Once visitors have read
the discussion, they could be asked to vote /
comment on that issue. |
Although
the net can be a medium which can show almost all types
of genre (which each have a range of different
conventions), web pages have their own conventions:
Audience
– at Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 (ages 5 to
11) in the UK National Curriculum, children
should write for a range of readers. The Internet
is ideal for this, because the children's
audience might be another primary school pupil
from Plymouth, a teacher from Thailand, or a
surfin' granny from Greenland.
So, it is very important that the children think
about this concept. They need to ask themselves
if the readers of their text are going to be able
to understand it, and to check if they have used
any language which is only used in their country
(and which people from other countries might get
confused by).
This is a feature indicated in the UK National
Curriculum – children should be taught to
reflect on their use of language, and make
judgements about choice of vocabulary (Key Stage
2 Writing).
Presentation
– children need to check their work for
spelling and grammatical errors. After all, this
work could be viewed by thousands and thousands
of people, so it is important that it is correct
(layout and presentation are features which are
also picked up in the UK National Curriculum).
Design
– Surfers are notoriously picky about the
sites that they visit. If they find the web pages
hard to read the text, if they can't find their
way around pages, or if the pages take too long
to load, they will go elsewhere.
Therefore, children need to make sure that text
is:
easy to read
(not full-width screen reading,
"quiet" backgrounds, text of a
suitable size, consistency of sized and
styles of text).
easy to move
around (links clearly
marked, clear structure and organization
to pages)
quick to load
(pictures, animations and
sounds need to be kept to a minimum).
To find out how you could organize the
making of web pages in your classroom / school, click here.
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