Recently in class, we have been working on planning how we will teach the fourth graders lessons and introductions to Scratch as practice for our Barbados trip, and to even maybe get them into coding. In doing so, we are learning the best way to teach the kids and the best way to get them to understand and enjoy Scratch.
So far I have learned several tactics about teaching kids. The first is that when teaching kids, it’s good to make them discover how things work by doing things they already know how to do. For example, the drawing game in the lesson plan. The kids will act as the sprite and the programmer without even knowing it by explaining how to draw a secret picture to a friend. By doing this, the kids can then realize how Scratch works and how programming every little detail is super important, just like telling their friends to draw every detail and explain it very descriptively. I also have learned that when teaching kids, it is important to plan out everything precisely, and be ready for the kids to either really understand the lesson, or to maybe need the extra help. For the kids moving extra fast on the project, we have challenges for them. For the kids who need the extra help, we wrote out a detailed lesson plan so explaining something is easy and makes sense to the kids. Overall, I’m excited to teach the fourth graders, and hope that they enjoy Scratch. Here is an example of one of the drawings the kids will try to explain to their friends.
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Recently in class we have been making lesson plans to help prepare us to teach the 3rd graders about Scratch. We have made a basic outline of questions to ask and main points to talk about, so that next class we can go back through, add a little more detail, and finalize our plans. We have split the lesson plans into two sections, as we will be teaching the younger girls over a time period of two days.
While creating these lesson plans, I have realized a lot about teaching others. For one, you really have to explain every little detail, even if it that detail seems like basic knowledge to you. You may perceive the things you are teaching as simple, but to younger people who have less experience or knowledge than you, the correct thing to do might not come so easily. I also learned that you have to ask a lot of questions. The more questions you ask, the more likely the students will actually understand what is happening when they are coding. If they understand what is really going on in the computer, they will be able to discover new things without having to be directly taught. Recently in class we have been working on creating booklets. These booklets cover various
topics about computer programming in Scratch that will be used by the teachers in Barbados to be able to continue teaching after the week we spend there. We have finished up the first four booklet topics and will continue working on them this week. This class has made me realize truly how fortunate we are to grow up in a place where education is so heavily valued and we are provided with some of the best resources and opportunities the world has. While we are so fortunate, there are plenty of others who just do not have great opportunities. That is why our One Laptop per Child program is so important. The children we will help were not born in a wealthy country with great opportunities. For them, an introduction to computer programming could change the course of their lives and could be the difference between being able to get a good education and good job for themselves or remaining in the same situation they are in now. This image suggests that learning computer programming can provide an opportunity to create wealth and leave poverty behind. Today in class we finished up our directions for first two sections: basic skills and intro to Scratch. Then our two different groups switched our sections we did and read through theirs to check the instructions, re-iterate them, and make them more descriptive and easier to understand. Some things I've learned is how to make better lesson plans to specifically cater to the children we are going to teach at Barbados in the spring.
This has opened my eyes and really helped me understand children’s education in our culture versus other cultures. We also had a discussion about the different values of respect and behavior in the Barbados culture versus ours in America. It makes me so much more appreciative of our education and the creativity we are encouraged to develop at CSG. Last class, we worked on cleaning and sorting the laptops donated by our school. Every year, when the seniors graduate, they have the option to donate their computers, or take them home, and the class of 2017 was very generous! Mrs. Murakami is hoping that we can install some software on the computers, and donate them to less fortunate people. However before we do that, we have to take all the stickers off, and make sure they are properly working. We also learned about open source software, which means code that is free to use and modify. One interesting thing we learned is that Firefox is open source, and anyone can change the algorithm they use, in order to give the whole world better search results. I am very excited to be involved in this awesome project, I have a passion for service work and STEM, and pairing them together is fun so far but can only get better!
This week we had our second day of class. We downloaded the correct version of Scratch and we started talking and planning out what we wanted to achieve this year.
One of our goals was that we wanted create a book of guidelines to help teachers or other adults try and teach the kids how to use the program while we aren’t there. We also read over the learning plan from last year to see what we could make better and what we could take out. In class, we all started working on the guidelines for the booklet and I started with the intro to Scratch. In the introduction, we explain the layout, what Scratch is, and how it was first started. Although it was only our second class, I learned how excited I was to be a part of this amazing experience and how lucky I am to be able to do this. I can’t wait to get more work done and learn more about how this class works! This week we had our first day of class. We went over the course as a whole and what we should expect from the class. We also went over the trip and saw some pictures which were fun to see again In my class, we decided that this year we are going to create a curriculum so that teachers can use our guidelines to help teach while we aren't physically there. I am really excited to start working on this because I feel like this will really help others around the world and the kids we will teach on our trip!
Because I have already traveled I knew that I wanted to take the class again since I have witnessed first hand how we actually helped these children. Watching the kids in Barbados faces light up when they finally caught on to what we were teaching made our work so rewarding and made it feel like we were actually making a difference. I'll never forget how the day we left the students were so sad and hugging us and crying which just goes to show how much they enjoyed our lessons and learning. I hope that this year we can do the same and even more than last year! |
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April 2018
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