We put Year 1 and Year 6 children together to make an electronic book which is then put on the school intranet. This has a really big Wow! factor for both groups. Year 1 children write stories using Textease (a recent theme was about animals) and illustrate it on paper. They then pair up with Year 6 partners to make their book, scanning illustrations into the computer and using the multimedia package Illuminatus to animate the story and add special effects (you could also use PowerPoint). The finished products are often quite spectacular. The project helps younger children with literacy, especially narrative and sequencing, and improves older pupils’ computer skills. Younger children, too, learn a lot about ICT. The stories can be shown on computers and whiteboards and we have an electronic archive. Young children can read the text and listen to the voice-over.

Lisa Matthews, Robin Hood Junior and Infant School, Birmingham