by Veronica Carter, Foundation Stage Co-ordinator at Camelsdale First School

I have been using email very regularly in my reception class for over a year now. You only have to see the children’s faces light up when a message comes in to know that this is something worthwhile. All in all I think it’s brilliant!

The key to its success is that the children are communicating with people that they genuinely want to communicate with, and who genuinely want to communicate with them. Messages are sent and received from mums and dads, grannies and granddads and uncles and aunts. Everybody gets a turn because we can always arrange for older siblings or friends within school to send a message or have the Head write to the class and one of the children who does not get messages from home can be the one to reply. A lot of parents have access to email at work even if they do not have it at home and using it from work does not seem to be a problem for them.

When the children come in from mid-morning play they sit and have their snack. This is the time that the 'helper' of the day – one of the children - checks the email. Unknown to the children I always check it first just to be on the safe side but have never once received anything untoward. It is unusual to have any more than one or two messages per day and it takes very little time for the child in question to come up, listen to their message being read out to the class and to tell me what they want me to write in their reply. They then do that all-important part of adding the kisses and cuddles, ceremoniously clicking on ‘Send’. By typing in the kisses they gain practical experience of how to get just one output for a keystroke - something that in other circumstances can be such a difficult skill for them to master(??). As time goes on I have the children type in their own names at the end of their message, providing a gentle introduction to the keyboard and even the Shift key.

By the end of the first term all children have learnt how to open up Outlook Express, watch for new messages, open up a new message and maximise it. Apart from learning about ICT the children are learning about writing carrying a message, and having direct experience of writing for a real purpose. The content of the messages does not seem to be important. The parent may comment on how the dog did at dog training that morning and the child might say that they are playing in the home corner. It is not the content that matters but the contact.

Last year some of the fathers from the class went on frequent business trips abroad and took to writing to us. We began sticking smiley face stickers on a globe to show all the places we had received mail from. Lots of discussion followed as a result and by the end of the year the class had three standard questions for anybody who wrote in from abroad: ‘What was the weather like? ‘How long did it take to get there in an aeroplane?’ and ‘What sort of animals are there?’

Using email in this way is great fun, tremendously worthwhile and it is not overly time consuming. Having worked this way for four terms I know I shall certainly be continuing to do so!