Scratch in the Class - Is great!!!
Thats my eight weeks in school now over. I've spent 8 hours in both classes, giving introductory lessons in Scratch. The reaction has been great the kids loved it and teachers enjoyed it too. While the emphasis was on how they enjoyed it ,the kids were tested to at intervals to see if they were making progression as well. Which they seemed to manage well. Now in the process of writing up results so will be able to comment more on that soon. The great thing for me is that some of the children have now got Scratch at home with more of them asking me how you get it at home(and some other teachers in the schools as well) . Each week the lessons were delivered in the same format: me giving a brief talk then letting the kids onto the computers to work after all its a great way for them to get more time on the computer to be creative and work. Most lessons would be noisy but in a good way if that makes sense, the kids were excited about what they were doing and by getting the instant results on screen of their programs and any changes this helped.
The good news is that Scratch is going to be used in one school for future classes :) (i've not spoken yet to one of the teachers) so heres hoping we can inspire some more programmers of the future.
Dear Amanda,
Thanks for your reply. Will certainly email you as I have received the address.
Best regards,
Ai Boon
Ai thanks
During the one hour lesson the kids got at least 50 minutes on the computer(i tried to talk for as little as possible) There was 21 students in one class and 25 in the other. They were working in pairs (in school the computing suite only had enough computers to facilitate this) Because of the age of the class (8 year olds) I decided to give the very basics starting with turtle graphics and getting them moving in different directions. From that i introduced other concepts such as iteration and conditional blocks. My tests had them write a program which got them from a start point to a finish point. I can certainly email the tests I gave to you.
If its ok with you I shall ask the scratchEd team to pass on my details to you for you to email me and I can give you more information on my work.
Amanda
Hi there. Thanks for sharing your experience. Congratulations for completing your classes and making the kids and teachers excited about Scratch. I just started teaching Scratch to a small group of eight students. Each lesson lasts 2 hours.
I wonder if you can tell me how much Scratching time they get during your one hour lesson and how many students there are in your class. Do they share computers? Do you focus on one group of Scratch blocks at a time?
Yesterday, I had my fourth lesson and it went much better because I broke it up into two groups - the fast group and the beginners' group. So the fast group went on to create their first games while I revised the first three lessons with the rest and the results were good.
May I also find out how you conduct your test? Is it multiple choice? Perhaps you can give me a sample test question? Thank you.
Have a lovely day.
Best regards,
Ai Boon