Unplugged Junior Lesson

The fruit game

The children start with a piece of fruit in their hand and the idea is for them to pass them around the circle with their friends and try and get the other piece of fruit so they have a pair.

This involved them having to collaborate and co operate and come up with a system that worked. 

Lego Build

This involved giving clear and precise instructions to see if their partner was able to build the same object out of lego as them.  They learnt that sometimes what they thought was a clear instruction was not!  They began to understand that it was important to be precise with the size, colour and shape and the position that each lego needed to go.  We had mixed results but each time they got better.  They also needed to listen very well!

We could see where we went wrong and debugged.

This team had success and worked well together listening and following instructions.

Coding the Plushie

We looked at direction and finding the best algorithm to get the Robot Kid  to the plushie

We discovered that some of our instructions were not clear to follow

 It was easier when we used arrows and showed direction.

Animation

We have begun to look at animation.  We started off as a whole class and discussed animations we have watched.  After we viewed a short film of Wallace and Gromit we shared what we noticed.

The first step is to create a thaumatrope - we used two pictures opposite each other when we spun them fast the images blended into one another giving the illusion that the bird was in the cage or the fish was in the bowl.

Claymation

Using the camera on their chromebook they set up their stage 

Groups were given the task to make their ball roll, make their snake slither and make their clay grow.

Once they had viewed their work they downloaded the Clap motion app from the google chrome store.

They used a story board to draw their plan for their story.

The juniors used letters and an ipad to animate spelling words.  They started with their names.

Creating bookmarks by following instructions

Making the bookmarks also worked with the younger class.  I adapted my plan by getting them to go through the process step by step as a whole class, we wrote up the instructions together on the whiteboard and used less words and more pictures. 

Using googly eyes and cutting out our parts for the face worked better as than drawing freehand.

Colour by Pixel- Programming through pixels

Programming through pixels

- Recapped on how to read  X & Y axis and follow coordinates

Writing their own program for their pixel picture

Students come up with their own pixel design and wrote the program for it

- Students made a grid 4x4

- Teacher called out coordinates for them to plot

- Created their first pixel on paper

- They then created their own after reading a program and plotting the coordinates

- To finish off they create their own pixel picture and write the program for it

Write an algorithm

Make an emoji bookmark 😁

Sequence, debugging, algorithm, decomposition

• Watch the video of how to make the bookmarks
• Record on paper the steps of instructions on how to make them- use sketches to help.  
• Choose your own design and make it.
• Test to see if it works  😃

Some students got creative and added bodies 

Bluebots lesson in action

BLUE BOTS

I taught several lessons throughout the Junior school.  We looked at how we could use the previous lessons we had covered on algorithm and coding and linked them to using the blue bots.

The children were very excited to watch the bots move after they had programmed to do so.  We worked together as a class first to practise finding the right way to get to certain shapes.
We then worked in pairs to master the step of the bug dance after we had read the story.  We lined all the bots up together to see which ones were able to successfully complete the dance.