Sway is one of the new technologies that Microsoft has created, it is a free app that helps you create and share beautiful, interactive and engaging presentations. These presentations include but are not limited to:
- Reports
- School or business presentations
- Stories
- Newsletters
- School/work projects
Before I go any further let me show you what I mean. This is a Sway that I created to introduce myself to my new class last year. Take a look and let me know what you think!
See what I mean? Through Sway I was able to show my students photos, maps, videos and information about myself in a beautiful and interactive way. I’ve used Sway a lot in the past year with my Year 1 class, the possibilities are endless!
Teachers can create amazing Sways to share information with their students but the thing that I personally love the most about Sway is how easily my students can use it. I taught Year 1 this last year, my students were 5-6 years old and they were all able to use Sway independently.
But don’t take my word for it, let me show you an example!
One of our literacy topics this year was Fairytales and my Year 1s retold the story of the Three Little Pigs, then they innovated it and wrote their own versions by changing the characters. After my students had written their story plans I gave them the opportunity to publish their story plans using Sway to present to their classmates. This is a Sway that Anya* a girl in my class made.*Names are changed.
Cute story huh? Anya created this Sway completely independently, at 6 years of age! She planned her own story, she typed up all of the sentences herself, added all of the content independently, and presented her story idea to her classmates when she was finished. Anya was so proud of herself for doing all of this without my help, it really boosted her confidence! As a result of this she was a lot more engaged when writing her innovated story in her literacy book and produced some of her best work to date!
Some of my lower attaining children found it difficult to type so I typed a simple story for them, jumbled it up and then they moved the sentences so that they were sequenced chronologically. Once they had done this they added details such as adjectives and adverbs to extend the sentences and accented them to show their improvements to me! This way the lesson was accessible to all of my students.
Anya used a lot of different skills to create this Sway:
- She used her writing skills; she sounded out all of her words using her phonetic knowledge and held and checked her sentences to make sure that they made sense. Essential skills in Year 1 that require a lot of practice!
- She practiced proofreading her work to check the grammar. Interestingly I found that after I taught my students how to make a capital letter with the shift key that they thought more about using them and they appeared more in their literacy books. Perhaps because of the tactile association they’ve made with the keyboard?
- It deepened her understanding of sequencing her sentences into chorological order. Anya was already quite good at this but other students in my class still struggled to sequence their ideas and I found this to be a great practicing tool for them!
- This activity also deepened her understanding of algorithms in later lessons; following an exact procedure to create her Sway. This example tied nicely with our later coding lessons!
That’s just one example of how students can use Sway to present. My Year 1s published their story plans rather than their full stories because they were very slow at typing due to their young age but older children could easily type more into their presentations! Here are some other presentation ideas that you could use Sway for:
- Book reports
- News reports
- Biographies
- Instructional texts such as recipes
- Story writing
Stay tuned for future blog posts on using Sway, including how teachers can use Sway to showcase new learning as well as posts featuring Microsoft technologies.
For more information and support on how to Sway and other Microsoft technologies check out the Microsoft Educator Community.
Leave me a message below or comment on my Twitter to let me know how you get on!
Phoebe Teaches 