Last time we had OLPC, we taught fourth graders a little more about Scratch and let them explore different ways to use it. We also gave the girls a project to complete. We told them that they had to make a story using Scratch, and they made some super creative and cool stories. I saw one about dogs, one about music, and even one about flying hippos. I thought seeing what the girls did after we taught them was super rewarding. It felt like all of our teaching really paid off! I am so happy that I got to teach those girls. Teaching them helped me learn a lot. I learned a lot about how to help younger kids, and how sometimes changing the way you explain things can really benefit a student. I think that this experience will really prepare me for what I will be teaching in Barbados, and I had a lot of fun!
Check out the photos page for pictures of our teaching.
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Please check out all the photos that we just uploaded! They illustrate our teaching experiences in November when we taught the CSG 4th graders some Scratch skills.
This week in One Laptop Per Child, we finalized our teaching plans for the 4th graders. Our class taught them how to use Scratch, an online program that teaches students to code. On Wednesday, we split into two groups, one group taught an early class, while the other group taught another class later in the day. We played games with the fourth graders to help them understand how coding works, by using coloring and walking games where they had to use instructions to complete the tasks. Once they were ready, we helped them log into their Scratch accounts, and began playing with the program. We showed them how to move their sprites, make their sprites draw shapes, and say Hello! Teaching the fourth graders was lots of fun, and I can’t wait to teach them again next week!
This week through teaching the fourth graders, I have learned more about teaching others, and explaining things in a way so that everyone can understand. Teaching a group of children who have never used Scratch before, can prove surprisingly difficult. It is necessary to explain tasks in a way understandable by everyone, a visual can help to show what you’re talking about. This is great practice for teaching the students in Barbados, and also helps us become more accustom to Scratch! This week in One Laptop Per child we have taken a break from our usual installing software and are learning about Scratch. Scratch is an online or downloadable coding platform that simplifies coding for beginners. As we have been learning a lot about how to use Scratch we have also been planning a lesson to teach Scratch and other coding basics to the fourth graders here at CSG. This is a great opportunity for the fourth graders to learn more about how to code as it is extremely useful knowledge that can be applied to many different fields. This is also an incredible chance for us Upper School students to both learn how to teach and communicate with the younger girls it also teaches us about Scratch and how to use it through the process of teaching.
Currently in One Laptop Per Child, we have been preparing to teach 4th grade students at Columbus School for Girls about the world of computer coding through an online programming website called Scratch. Scratch offers simplified overview of computer programming, and was developed and catered toward kids to give them exposure to coding (Example of Scratch project below). Over the past few weeks, we have begun to brainstorm and plan the lessons that we will teach the elementary school students. Before we begin teaching them how to use the program, we plan to play a couple of games and ask a few questions to get the students thinking. In one game, we are planning to have the students instruct us on how to walk in a square, however they will notice that they have to be very specific in their wording to get us to complete the task, just as they will when they are working on the computers. While we plan on teaching some aspects of the actual program, we are also planning on allowing them learn through exploration and discovery on their own, keeping them interested, and giving them a sense of independence.
Over the course of the class so far, it has been such an incredibly rewarding experience. I am excited to share Scratch with the Lower Schoolers, in hopes that it will pique their interest to join a technology class in Upper School. The impact that we have already made, and will make on the lives of others is more than I ever thought possible when I first joined this course. Making technology more accessible one computer time has had so much more impact than I initially realized, in that even just one computer can change the life of a child. Additionally, I have learned so much about myself through this experience, and that I tend to close myself off and confine myself to my community, and forget about what a big world we live in. I have learned that I need to take more time to make differences in others’ lives, because even the smallest acts of kindness, no matter how large the impact, are making the world a better place one step at a time. |
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