I am now entering into my fifth week of Code Club. I have been supporting the Computing specialist teacher to run this oversubscribed extracurricular club for Years 3 and 4 since the start of the Summer term. Held after school on Thursdays, the club has been an enjoyable way to be more involved in the school community, and to improve my own teaching of Computing. The children have been using Scratch to complete challenges on the Code Club website. They have created their own rock band, programmed a space animation, and some have started to create a ghost-themed game. The children are able to work at their own pace, and use the support of the website, supporting staff, and eager volunteers from Siemens in Didsbury. The lead teacher encourages the children to overcome bugs by carefully checking their code, and through trying something new. The children have become more resilient and dedicated to improving their coding skills as a result. I have been impressed by the way in which the children have all created some original, despite having the same starting points. Some have developed bands featuring opera singers, theatrical backgrounds and cellos, whereas other children have popstars under the sea, complete with multiple drum kits! I have enjoyed seeing the children's creativity shine through their use of code, and it has been a lovely way to spend my Thursday evenings.
0 Comments
I am coming to the end of teaching a unit based around Google Sheets. The children have been learning how to enter data into a spreadsheet, and manipulate the data for a specific purpose. I decided to frame this unit around the context of a shop, and informed the children that they were going to design their products and create spreadsheets to show their sales. This was greeted enthusiastically, and has been a very popular series of lessons!
We have progressed from entering data and formatting cells, into the use of the SUM formula and the creation of charts and graphs. The children have learned how to smart copy, and create quick tables displaying their annual sales and revenue. They have been excited to share these spreadsheets with peers, and have embellished their spreadsheets with pictures, colours and typefaces. I have embellished this learning content with the inclusion of 'real life' spreadsheets every week. I have shared screenshots of spreadsheets gathered from my friends and family, and discussed how spreadsheet skills are used in the world of work. The children have been fascinated by this additional content, and I will continue to demonstrate 'real life' examples of Computing in future lessons! Today, I have taught a very successful Science lesson using the school Chromebooks.
The children have been learning about food chains and habitats, and I have discovered a great simulation site which helps to demonstrate the effect of increasing and decreasing populations on the rest of the food chain. The children shared a Chromebook between pairs, and after an initial teacher input, used the website to develop their own learning and understanding. We discussed the e-safety issues related to using the internet, and the children shared their 'top safety tips' with the rest of the class. The class do not normally using computers beyond iPads in Accelerated Reading sessions, or during discrete Computing lessons, and so it was lovely to see their excitement. There are still some teething problems - forgotten passwords or email addresses, getting the Chromebooks in and out of their secure storage units, and simply navigating the touchpad and keyboard. However, I can see that their use of technology is developing, and really benefitted their learning in this lesson. I will look to be booking the Chromebooks again in future! The Food Chain Game: www.sheppardsoftware.com/content/animals/kidscorner/games/foodchaingame Today, I have taught my first Computing lesson of FPP, focusing on Google Classroom and writing Google Docs. I would definitely recommend that teachers use Google classroom, as it has helped my class to become more digitally literate, and developed their peer-feedback and collaboration skills. Our LO was 'to add features to a Google Doc', and our success criteria were: I can / am beginning to… ….add a table to my report ….add new rows to a table …share and comment on work After handing out laptops and getting the children logged into Google classroom, we discussed the LO and SC, and how these link to the Building Learning Power skills. This approach is used across the school, and includes the main skill areas of resilience, reciprocity, resourcefulness and reflectiveness. We agreed that the children would be using the skills of collaboration, making links and perseverance. I like this approach, because it ensures that the children are really clear about what learning skills they need to be employing. Last week, the children wrote reports about our school trip to MOSI on Google Docs. They added text and photos. This week, they added tables and wrote a timetable of the day. After I modelled this on the board, they were very independent and created colour-coded, complex timetables. I also used this opportunity to encourage children to develop their report writing, and add key language features such as fronted adverbial phrases and more complex tenses. After adding tables, the children shared their work to our Google Classroom. They then peer-reviewed each others work against our success criteria, leaving comments in the shared work area. The children showed a great understanding of the criteria, and set suitable targets, including 'try to use more paragraphs to explain instead of just photos'. After this, I encouraged the children to respond to the feedback, and develop their reports even more. This was a great example of children taking on formative assessment, and using peer feedback to develop their work. There are a few children in the class who are particularly able when it comes to Computing. I targeted them by requesting that they included hyperlinks in their report, and used the thesaurus tool to develop the vocabulary. The extension of the children's vocab is currently a big target in year four, and so this tied into this focus very nicely. I have just started my FPP placement - only 12 weeks until QTS! I will be posting much more about the placement and my experiences, but as an update:
|
|