Teaching Computational Thinking and Coding with Scratch (and CS First)
Anthony Speranza
Bit.ly/speranzascratch
Scratch 3.0 is coming out this year.
Digital technologies is the way the world is going so it is important for students to know about it. We teach art and music to all students and they don’t all become artists and musicians so there is no expectation for all students to become programmers.
CS First website - takes you through structured lessons to cover the content / projects.
Tutorial videos are included - and help and support sheets and forums - the teacher does not have to feel like they need to know everything.
Scratch 3.0 does not work on flash so it will rock on anything.
Devices like sphere etc can be coded from Scratch 3.0 via Bluetooth.
Scratch jr has a specific Chromebook app.
If the videos are too overwhelming then on the right of the scratch screen is step by step help and support.
Community and connections - how do we use these tools to showcase community of school, location, diversity of students and learning?
How do we grow our global community?
Who is accountable for you implementing your learning?
Patrick Green
The Relevant Teacher
@pgreensoup
Why is it hard to look back at educational practice and admit when you were wrong?
#sasedu
How are we placed to change as the world changes? Are we as teachers prepared and if not, how can we prepare our students?
Da Vinci Innovation Labs
Two days in school - learn from home three days a week - the students go to work with their parents some days and take self paced school work with them to be getting on with. What level of trust and organization do you need to make this happen?
Sequoia has School - mixed grade classrooms - everyone is held back twice before the age of 12. Personalization and leadership. Institutionalized failure. - failure as normal so they get a chance to try things that they have not done yet or did not get the chance to the first time round. This is done with cooperation with the parents to work out when is a good time for it to happen.
It is not always school wide initiatives attached affect the students, it is individual teachers.
It all starts with relevant teachers who don’t wait for the school to change but lead from their classrooms.
A relevant teacher knows their role is different from what it was in the past - flipping - allowing students to be teachers.
Is what I’m teaching transferable beyond my classroom walls? If not, why am I teaching it?
Are you wasting students time teaching them things they will never need?
Relevant teachers are not afraid to access to information and to allow students to access it when they need to.
How much of the student day is filled with stuff they can find on the internet?
Should students be allowed to use their devices in exams as this is the way the world works - no need to memorize - dont make students do what adults dont do. Adults look things up when they need to in the process of doing a job. Why do we expect students to memorize everything?
“The End of Average” one size fits nobody - Todd Rose
Curriculum building is not perfect for everyone. Meeting students where they are at - not just learning wise but physically and online.
Craft a digital footprint / portfolio. What is the best way for students to do this so they can showcase themselves online in a positive way?
Here is what I did and how I did it - show the process and thinking, not just the end product.
Drive and A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink
Autonomy
Mastery
Purpose
The “shoulder shrug” - dont give all the answers.
Www.CMDigitalAge.com
20% time for students to do what they want - genius hour? - passion time? .. etc
Alison White and Shaun Kirkwood
@aliwh_white
@shaunyk
Imagine - Investigate - Iterate
What is something that I am doing that is not that important?
Think of things that you can get rid of.
Value student ability to not follow instructions.
The problem with exemplars is that the students try to replicate them exactly and not be creative themselves.
Do they have a preconceived idea of what the end outcome might be because of the exemplars that you gave them?
When students choose something over what we as teachers want them to do - is this addiction or just more interest?
Exploration and immediate feedback is “addictive”
In modern games, there are side quests as well as getting from a to b. Can be make our lessons more like this. An end outcome but with possibilities on how to get there.
We talk about “work” all the time at school. Why does everything have to be work?
The students are working in pairs and are playing a card game. This involves them DESCRIBING the product that is on the card to their partner.
When we were all together, we played a game with a pack of emoji cards to warm us up. The instructions for the rest of the lesson was to sit in pairs and use the help cards to describe to each other what is pictured on the cards.
Lesson Topic :- Describing Products to Each Other
Year Group :- Year 11
Learning Outcome
To be able to describe a product / object to each other verbally.
Critically analyse their own and others’ outcomes to inform the development of ideas for feasible outcomes. Undertake ongoing experimentation and functional modelling, taking account of stakeholder feedback and trialling in the physical and social environments. Use the information gained to select, justify, and develop a final outcome. Evaluate this outcome’s fitness for purpose against the brief and justify the evaluation, using feedback from stakeholders.
We will continue to do whole class describing of products / things at the start of each lesson.
Further in this project
Describing skills will be used both in their research of existing chair designs and of their own design work.
Reflection and Analysis
What went well.
Lesson Content :- doing the warm up at the start was good as it got the students interested and they were all joining in.
Lesson Pacing :- I allowed them to take as much time as they wanted for the game, and this ended up being about 15 minutes which was good. They stayed on task for the whole activity so this amount of time was just right.
Lesson Delivery :- Although the start of the lesson had the students around the front table for a while, it was a more interactive session as we did the warm up card game all together. I managed to keep my session instructions super short this time so the students could then get on with the activity in pairs. This enabled me to get round the class as they were working and work with the pairs rather than spend too much time with the whole class.
Student Understanding :- They worked well together and helped each other. This helped their understanding and taking turns helped with this too. They seemed to get more comfortable with the describing as the game went on.
Student Outcomes :- I was pleased with the amount of fun they had while doing this activity.
What still needs work.
Lesson Content :- I photocopied / printed the images onto paper so we had to hide the game cards under a sheet of paper so the students could not see what they were as they were a little see through. Card would have been better as you would not have been able to see what they were from the back.
Student Outcomes :- Only 6 students were there today due to various trips out today so the rest of the class missed this.
Other Comments.
It became apparent as they were working that they realised that when they explained how the object was used, it made it a lot clearer what the object was. One team especially was avoiding explaining how the thing could be used as it gave their opponent more chance to guess what it was.
I hope they remember this as they are describing their own designs. Explaining how their design is used or how parts of it work will really help with the understanding of what their design is.
This is some of the ongoing lesson during the describe game.
I have included the full 15 minutes of the game for each team here. I decided to do this as their conversations for the whole time were focussed on the task and they were working hard at the describing that they had to do. These videos also show that they were having fun while doing the activity. Please scrub through to see different sections throughout the videos.
Team 1
Team 2
Team 3
This is the card game we were playing in the warm up
I had a really good meeting with +Cheryl Harvey (specialist classroom teacher) today about various things and one of them was finding reading activities about design for my students to use.
She suggested that we have a look at the exemplars on the NZQA website for the standard that the students have just started. Link to exemplar work on the NZQA site here.
She said it is good for students to see the work of others across New Zealand. This also fits with what I saw happening in the classroom of +Robyn Anderson when I went to visit her. Blog post here.
I decided for their first reading task, that I would isolate just one design from each level, via a screen shot, and type up the student notes with that design, rather than have my students try to read the hand writing on the examples.
I am going to also copy what Robyn did in regards to printing these out and getting the students to highlight key elements with highlighter pens.
Design terms, sentence connectors, descriptions, reasons given for decisions made etc.....
Share to be undertaken using the following:
Year 7-9 Blogs
Year 10 Google+
Seniors
Reflection on ‘Share’ Opportunities in Term 1 for students taking Design and Visual Communication.
Share to be undertaken using the following:
Year 7-9 Blogs
Year 10 Google+
Seniors
The following are examples of various ‘Share’ Opportunities in Term 1 for students taking Design and Visual Communication:
Year 7+8
My Year 7 and 8 students from the intermediates have been pretty regular bloggers about what we do in DVC. We have not done this every week though so I need to keep up with that. The students have used photographs of their 3D and 2D work and embedded their drive documents onto their blogs.
Year 9+10
I have not got into the habit of getting my Year 9 and 10 students to blog or use a community this term so that is definitely a goal for me for the second tech rotation going into term 2.
NCEA Level 1, 2 and 3
We share into the class Google Plus Communities so that everyone can see all of the work that is produced by everyone else.
We embed our drive documents and also put photographs of 3D work and scans of drawings so everything is included here.
Impact of ‘Share’ Opportunities in Design and Visual Communication for Students
For the seniors, it is good for them to share within the communities as it helps support them knowing what to do. This is especially important for those students who are new to the subject. What is also good about the communities is that I have used the same ones for about 5-6 years so the students can scroll back and see work from previous years.
We started this today, and I put a simple product up on the screen for the whole class to discuss together. I split the question up into SOLO levels and colour coded what the students said appropriately to these levels.
The class were a bit shy about doing this for the first time today, but I hope they will get more confident about it as we go, as my plan is to do this all together as a whole class at the start of each lesson for quite some time. Link to Google Drawing here.
I then shared this Google Drawing into the class Google Plus Community so they can refer back to it and remind themselves what we did.
I hope that this makes the language of describing and explaining products and design work becomes what they use in a more natural manner. This then will feed into the analysis that they have to do about their own design work.
As part of my short term plan (blog post here), till the end of term, my target group of Year 11 students are going to be looking at describing products and objects, as a whole class, in pairs and individually. This will be in the form of talking and writing.
I want my students to get comfortable with describing what they see as they are not at the moment. This will build the foundation for moving into the higher areas of SOLO Taxonomy of explaining and analysing and this will allow them access to merit and excellence achievement at NCEA.
After the long Easter weekend, the plan is for the whole class to sit together at the start of each lesson and do description activities all together for 5-10 minutes. This will be in the from of talking about products shown on the screen with me doing the typing about what the class are saying. I did this for a Manaiakalani Class OnAir lesson last year and it worked out really well, so I want to do more of it this year. Blog post here.
I then want the students to get into pairs and play the "What Am I?" game.
I have made cards with images of products / things on them. There is also a question card for each pair. One student pulls a card at random from the pile and looks at the picture on it without showing their partner. Their partner has to ask the questions on the question card and try and guess what the object is from their team member's answers. I am considering making the questions points related, so they get more points for quicker correct guesses. This will hopefully then put the emphasis on detailed answers from their partner who is doing the describing.
This session will be recorded for Class OnAir so I will be able to analyse how this went. Link to resources.
After doing my inquiry breakdown, I received feedback about how to start and how to measure any change.
We were told in our CoL meeting that we needed to be able to monitor, track and measure any changes in smaller steps rather than waiting till the end of a project to see how the students have done.
In light of that, I have been thinking of tasks we can be doing till the end of term. This will then lead us into our design analysis of the chair designs we are doing next.
Today, the class did the first part in the yellow box.
I shared the following template with them and told them that they were not to ask each other about it and I would not be answering any questions.
Here are the samples that the students did today.
This will be my starting point for tracking any changes in the students writing in my subject. (I have made copies and changed the file names)
After the CoL meeting this week and listening to Rebecca from Woolf Fisher talk about how to structure our inquiries so that each step is clear and it is obvious what is being done, how it is being done and how it will be measured, I have tried to break apart my inquiry into the steps needed. Blog post about my main take outs from this meeting here.
This is my first version that I sent for feedback :-
This is the feedback I received with questions to answer so it is clearer :-
Measurable Outcome
Comparison of before, during and after writing samples. what aspects would you expect your changed teaching to impact on, how?
How they respond to questions, verbally and in writing, during the ongoing lessons. How would this relate to the writing? What would you look for?
Google Plus community use and how they respond to each others posts - analysis and feedback to each other. What would you look for in here? How would it relate to the NCEA breakdowns? Would this be similar to the verbal things you look for?
NCEA standard breakdowns - how are they approaching the different levels (A,M,E) Again, what would you look for in here? How would it relate to the other assessments? How does it relate to the conversations?
NCEA standard assessments (same questions)
This is my current version where I have added the "what does this look like" column Link to drawing here.
This has been an extremely useful exercise as it has started to really nail down in my own mind what I am trying to achieve this year ( I say started, as I have called this diagram Number 1. I am sure there will be changes and improvements and more versions as more feedback and suggestions come in from others and as I try things myself).
Edit / Addition on 25th March
After feedback from +Anne Sinclair, I have added another column next to the intervention box for possibilities of what tasks could look like. I feel like this could be a never ending list as I keep thinking of things to try.
Feedback received :-
A thought I had was around what you are doing in terms of yourpedagogy and practice to foster and enrich the vocab acquisition. What may engage them at a deeper level other than just exercises. Can you think of other strategies which may challenge them more and push them to speak, act, write, question, query, challenge each other. I think you are going to get a lot more ’talk’ happening in a social context like working in teams or pairs.
Addition to the diagram
We had our second CoL meeting of the term today. We had presentations from :
Meta Analysis of Inquiries
Dr Rebecca Jesson, Woolf Fisher Research Centre
“WFRC will analyse data and evidence from teachers’ inquiries to identified Learn Create Share practices likely to contribute to accelerated progress for students.”
and
Language Acquisition & Development as the Inquiry Lens into your subject/level
Dr Jannie van Hees
I have isolated my main take outs from these presentations in the slides above.
This has led to this task list to be focussing on and questions to answer.
My Inquiry
What chain of events am I wanting to put into place going from the achievement challenge, through the measurable outcomes, to the interventions that I want to try?
How am I going to measure the plan? - both short term and long term.
What will be the starting point for the measure?
What interventions do I want to try?
Why am I doing these?
What am I hoping to achieve with these interventions?
Moving forward with Literacy
Make the vocabulary that I want the students to learn obvious and connected to the context.
Making sure the students use the new vocabulary in multiple ways and multiple times.
Linking back to what they already know.
New ways of approaching the vocabulary work to make the students focus and notice.
To raise Maori student achievement and cultural visibility.
That 85% of Maori students will achieve NCEA Level 2.
My NCEA DVC Level 2 class of 14 students has 31% Maori students in it.
Last year, I had experimented with some of the tasks being done together in small groups. This was a successful experiment and I received some very good feedback from the students in regard to this.
Mahi tahi and manakitanga are elements that I started the year wanting to include a lot more of. They gave the students last year support and more confidence in their project work.
So far this year my Year 12 students have all joined the class Google Plus Community and have been doing elements of the first project, AS91627, in small groups of two or three. They have been helping each other with the collection of information and it has been a "no man left behind" situation. They have then felt more confident when they have had to produce the individual evidence for the standard. This standard is almost complete at this point and I will feedback on the credit outcomes and what the students thought about it when they have finished.
