techieMusings

First trimester introduction to programming was amazing! My class was so interested in everything that I taught them. They wanted to learn what I wanted to teach them – and then some. I decided to use Scratch to begin things (for about 2 months). The student had no prior programming experience at all. Most of my students were sophomores. My aim was: student discovery, story telling, and gaming. I started them with an about me/scrapbooking assignment. Students were supposed to tell me 3 things about themselves. All I showed them about Scratch before leaving them to “play” was how to move the Scratch cat across the screen (explained what the control structure and “when green flag” block meant). From there, I told them to play, create, and have fun! I always walk around the room while students work, so I answered questions when they came up. But I didn’t do a lot of talking in the first week and a half. When students were done, I had them fill out a survey. The main questions were: 1. what the student was most proud of in their project, 2. what cool thing they learned, and 3. what they would have done had they had more time. After this, we shared these projects. Which gave the class an opportunity to learn about one another. And gave them a chance to share the cool thing they learned with the rest of the class. So this was the start of there “formal” lessons.

After this, I did about 2 weeks worth of tutorial type worksheets – and some small projects scattered in between to reinforce these skills. I used the Scratch Curriculum Guide for ideas and used some of the handouts included there. (Thanks so much to the Scratch team for putting this together! My only recommendation would be to revise the “scrolling” lesson… I think it can be explained and coded in a much simpler, more intuitive way. Otherwise, great stuff!)

The last 3 weeks was spent on a project. Any project of their choosing. They were to try to incorporate as many of the cool things we had compiled over the course of the trimester. They worked in pairs and the theme was gaming and storytelling. I had them sketch up a proposal before they began and they met with me to get that approved.

Here are links to some of the projects (one group made a project that was too large to upload and another group is still finishing up):

• http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/mitchbr/2152277
• http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/JC-Projects/2152340
• http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/Tadewole/2155215
• http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/Tadewole/2155220

The class had a truly awesome time! My class met right before lunch and I literally had to kick them out of the room everyday. This says a lot – seeing as how I had a room full of VERY hungry teenage boys! They were so sad the trimester was over and some are trying to shuffle around their schedule so that they can get another trimester of programming in.

Next up: Programming with Alice…