Early Start - Week 1 Done!
August 07, 2009
I'm loving this program, almost as much as I liked the program I did in June.
We have around 35 students who have come at least once and registered. We have them split into 4 groupds.
It is SO nice to teach students and not have to worry about accountability. Just do what you love to do.
So we're doing Alice and most students are doing it and enjoying it. Each day I start out by showing them something new, and then I get out of their way and work. Most everyone is doing something, and it's fun to see how they make Alice and their world theirs. I've got one kid that is recording rap stuff. I've got kids asking about if they can do something, which has including blowing things up and having characters bleed. I point them in a direction and then get out of the way.
In fact, that's really the way I like to teach. I like to give an assignment:
Create an Alice world with at least two objects interacting and repeating actions without duplicating commands.
Then I like to get out of the way and let them be creative. If they get stuck, I'll show them part of the answer -- like a kid wanted something to blow up so I showed him how to make a fire start out small and get big (using resizing) and suggested moving body parts.
And yeah, I know they want to do violent stuff.
On the bad end, we have a group of boys who don't want to play. I had to turn the internet off for that class, as they kept wasting time by going into a game. We'll start with the internet off on Monday and see what happens.
I have a feeling that the game players are frequent flyers for the Assistant Principal's office.
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