4th Grade Participates in a Twitter Chat

As I have been trying to promote teaching students programming skills, I was interested in a Twitter chat on that topic that was scheduled for today.  I asked the hosts of the chat if they would mind if my 4th graders joined in, and they were thrilled to have some kids give their opinions about programming.  Some of the questions were, “What do you like most about programming?”  “What is the hardest thing about programming?”  “What age do you think children should start learning to program?”

Interestingly, we hadn’t had a chance to work on our programming lesson for the day before we did the chat.  So, the majority of the students seemed to feel that programming needed to be learned at age 8 and up; some felt that it shouldn’t be learned until college.  After we did some work with the “Daisy the Dinosaur” app this afternoon, I asked the age question again, and most of them agreed that kids as young as 4 or 5 could certainly be introduced to basic programming skills.

Even though “Daisy” is a pretty basic intro, the students made a lot of connections to systems thinking, and it was a good foundation for getting the idea of what programming was all about.

Today’s pictures were taken by David, our 4th grade photographer, as students worked on the Daisy app.

 

 

 

3rd Grade Guesses the Artist!

3rd grade continued to learn about doing internet research today, and practiced using relevant terms to narrow down their searches.  To practice their skills, they were given a paper with 4 artworks on it, and had to guess the artist using supporting evidence from the internet.  I thought it would help for them to have a few more clues than just the images, so they scanned the portraits using the iPad Aurasma app, and the subjects spoke to them. They took notes on what was said, and then used that information to figure out the name of the artist.  Ask your 3rd grader for the name of the mystery person!

We also continued to work on programming skills with the Daisy the Dinosaur app.  Our new resident student photographer, Katie, took some of the pictures of the students working hard on figuring out the right commands for Daisy.

Spiders and Dinosaurs

2nd grade GT had an action-packed morning today!  We started off by talking about spiders – the structure of their bodies, their communities, and their homes.  This is in preparation for a guest we will be welcoming next week – a tarantula!  Then the students were challenged to do some tough math problems related to spiders and insects.  For example, if there are 10 heads and 72 legs, how many spiders and how many insects are there?  I loved watching how each group tackled the problems in completely different ways, and I was really proud that the majority of the students kept trying even when it seemed like there was no answer to one of the questions.

Once we got our fill of spiders, we moved on to dinosaurs.  Well, specifically, we moved on to “Daisy the Dinosaur”, which is an app that introduces kids to computer programming.  There are several challenges, and then there is a “Freeplay” mode.  After completing the challenges, the students enjoyed  writing programs that made Daisy shrink and grow repeatedly; some of the programs made Daisy completely disappear off the screen.   We will be continuing with programming in the upcoming weeks.

 

 

Our Classroom Is an Obstacle Course


As I mentioned last week, I am beginning to teach programming to each grade level. To start things off, I have been setting up an obstacle course in the classroom with tables and chairs and various items. The students have to write a “program” using only symbols to direct people around the course.

3rd grade had to do a bit of revising of their programs a few times, as they realized they had forgotten some key steps.

Because 4th grade has so many students, they paired up to write their programs. The synergizing was evident throughout the room as the groups worked together to perfect their programs – and some even added a little creativity to the mix! A couple of groups included victory dances in their programs, which amused everyone. (Great way to Sharpen the Saw!)

Quite a few of our 7 habits were used by the students as they worked on this activity. I mentioned the need to Synergize, but they also had to Begin with the End in Mind as they planned their programs, Seek First to Understand as they followed each other’s instructions, and Think Win/Win when they disagreed with their partners.

5th grade will be working on their programs tomorrow, and I will be curious to see how their personalities are reflected in this project!

Another example of Synergizing – created by a couple of boys during our indoor recess today!

Project Wrap-Up and New Beginnings

This is our final week of the Global Cardboard Challenge.  The students in 2nd-5th were able to share their projects with their classmates during recess this week (5th will do this tomorrow), and are now taking the projects home.  If your child has a super large project, please make arrangements for transporting it by next Friday.

I know that I keep gushing about the creativity that the students have shown during this process, but I must say one more time that they have really astounded me with their ideas!  I am so glad this was an overall success, and I can’t wait to do it again next year.  It was definitely a productive use of our time.  I posted some more pictures of projects on my professional blog last week because I really want to encourage others to participate next year as well.  Here is the link.

As we say good-bye to our cardboard creations, we are embarking on new journeys in GT.  One of them involves computer programming.  I am planning to weave a programming piece into all of the grade levels this year because I think it is such a valuable skill.  Today the 4th graders got an unexpected introduction to this when I learned of a brand new augmented reality app that allows the user to program a 3-d robot to perform certain movements.  One pair of students even got their robot to perform a ballet move!

I just wrote a post on my professional blog about the gender bias that is still very evident in fields like programming and engineering.  I am determined to work very hard this year on persuading the girls in my classes that boys are not the only ones who can develop skills in these areas, and that they might even find it interesting!  I hope parents will join me in making an effort to eliminate the stereotypes that are often attached to these subjects.

Using the iPad to program the Atlas robot