After a whirlwind Term 1 where I was getting my head around a whole new subject area as well as teaching lots of new students and new levels of the curriculum, coming into the second term I feel much more confident in my planning.
This term I have new Year 7 and Year 8 classes taking part in Digital Technologies as we have termly rotations through the Technology subjects. This gave me a chance to reflect on what worked and what didn't in the first rotation and refine the unit plans accordingly.
One of the major changes I made to the Year 8 program was doing some 'offline' programming before we jumped into programming with the Spheros. On reflecting on the unit I taught in the first term, I found that although most of the students got a general understanding of Computation Thinking from Progress Outcome 3 in the new DT curriculum, they couldn't use the key language (e.g. algorithm, sequence, selection, iteration, debug) to describe what they were doing and why. This was probably partly because I was still getting my head around the lingo and the importance of the different concepts. This term I have a better understanding and am focusing on integrating the DT language authentically into my lessons.
This week we are focusing on the importance of sequence in programming and I came across this lesson which was a great way of highlighting the importance of sequencing in making a functioning program.
There are more instructions and materials in Course F of Code.org's CS Fundamentals.
The lesson was a great success and students who hadn't had any programming experience were able to see how important it is to have their instructions (code) in the right order, otherwise their 'program' did not create the outcome that they had intended.
It was a great forum for a discussion about bugs also, as the 'robots' read the code, the students could see the bugs in their code because the robot wasn't doing what they thought they would do.
This term I have new Year 7 and Year 8 classes taking part in Digital Technologies as we have termly rotations through the Technology subjects. This gave me a chance to reflect on what worked and what didn't in the first rotation and refine the unit plans accordingly.
One of the major changes I made to the Year 8 program was doing some 'offline' programming before we jumped into programming with the Spheros. On reflecting on the unit I taught in the first term, I found that although most of the students got a general understanding of Computation Thinking from Progress Outcome 3 in the new DT curriculum, they couldn't use the key language (e.g. algorithm, sequence, selection, iteration, debug) to describe what they were doing and why. This was probably partly because I was still getting my head around the lingo and the importance of the different concepts. This term I have a better understanding and am focusing on integrating the DT language authentically into my lessons.
This week we are focusing on the importance of sequence in programming and I came across this lesson which was a great way of highlighting the importance of sequencing in making a functioning program.
There are more instructions and materials in Course F of Code.org's CS Fundamentals.
The lesson was a great success and students who hadn't had any programming experience were able to see how important it is to have their instructions (code) in the right order, otherwise their 'program' did not create the outcome that they had intended.
It was a great forum for a discussion about bugs also, as the 'robots' read the code, the students could see the bugs in their code because the robot wasn't doing what they thought they would do.
This cup stacking lesson looks great. Thanks for sharing
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