Hello folks! I'm really excited to share my latest discovery with you. We've been making a big effort to get the children in our school coding. The classes with children aged 8 onwards are currently using Scratch to code. This is going down a treat! They absolutely love it! The teachers are using the free lesson plans developed by LERO as a guideline. You can log in and download them for free from here. The great thing about these plans is that they give open-ended challenges so children can work on the same concept in their own way. However, we felt the younger classes weren't quite ready for Scratch just yet. We wanted something a bit easier to introduce the basics first. I went hunting and stumbled upon The Foos (developed by CodeSpark). It was exactly what I wanted for my 7 year olds and it's also suitable for younger children too. It is a fantastic way to work on developing logical sequences and problem-solving (If you're in a PYP school, it perfectly fits the definition of learning through inquiry!). Here's a quick video intro where you'll see how different blocks can be put together and you can use loop functions and "if" commands.
Before I continue, I'll mention the best part - there is a 147 page curriculum available for free from The Foos website. Each lesson in the curriculum has a particular focus. They recommend which levels of The Foos to play to reinforce this learning and they provide resources to do "unplugged activities." Don't worry if you, as a teacher, don't feel confident about coding. The curriculum guide lays out all the required coding language simply. By working through the lessons yourself, before doing so with the children, you should feel fully confident! I'm going to introduce The Foos to my class after the Christmas holidays. I am certain that they'll love it. I tried out the lesson plans myself, playing each of the associated levels and I got completely hooked. I even brought the iPad home one weekend to continue doing it! If a teacher can get sucked into it so easily, I'm sure the children are going to love learning in this way! In fact, I'm pretty sure they won't even know they're learning because they'll be too busy having fun. In my school, each child has an iPad so we're going to use the free Foos app. It's also available for free in the Google Play Store for those of you who are android users. The Foos is available to use online for those of you with computer rooms. Please note that they recommend using Internet Explorer, Firefox or Opera (I was using Chrome and it's not supported) and you'll need to download the Unity3D browser plugin. Please comment below if you've been using The Foos and want to share your experiences!
Hi all, I've been up the walls busy lately (literally!). One of the things ticked off my "to do" list is finishing the IT room displays. Here's what I've been up to since I last wrote about it. I really enjoyed putting up this timeline. I decided to do it as a wavy line rather than a straight one to make it a bit more interesting. This is part of an IT room decor set I made during the summer. In case you're wondering, the bird templates are to preserve the lives of the birds who mistakenly fly towards their own reflection and meet their end! And here are close-ups of the start and the end!
These other posters like the welcome sign, "Caution: Coders at Work" and reminders to save, click undo or think before you post are also part of the IT room decor kit that I made.
Hi there, It's been a while since I've posted! Now back to business. As the ICT coordinating teacher in our school this year, one of the jobs on my list was to do up our IT room. I haven't had the time to do all that I want to do but here are some updates on the progress and where to find the resources. We've had a big push on getting coding this year. Some of the classes have been introduced to Scratch and they are absolutely loving it. Many of the children work on their own Scratch projects at home without being asked to! I wanted to do a big Scratch display to show the different blocks as a point of reference during IT sessions. After a quick search, I found these Scratch blocks ready-made on Twinkl. You need to have a platinum classic account to download them. As we're a PYP school, I decided that coding really helps to develop the learner profile attribute of being "thinkers." Hence the lightbulb overload!
I also wanted to put in something to explain why we are coding in the first place. I found some lovely quotes from Stephen Hawking, Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs about programming. Who better to tell us what to do than some modern greats? The keyboard style lettering is so easy to make - simply add a white letter on top of a rounded black box - BAM!
I've also put up this keyboard shortcuts display that is part of my IT room/computer lab classroom decor kit. If you're interested in just the keyboard shortcuts part of the pack, comment below and I'll add that to the store. I could also make a Mac version of it with the command button instead of the control one - just let me know what you'd like!
The last display that I'll show to you today - which is still a work in progress is our robotics board. Two teams in our school are going to take part in the Jr. FLL (First Lego League) robotics competition. The challenge this year is called "Waste Wise." Here we hope to document our progress between now and the end of the competition.
