Coding - Making Mazes

 I am back at school teaching after living in Fiji for the last 6 months!!  This term I am teaching Year 3.

Maze Coding

We are looking a mazes.  We discussed what a maze was and how we had to really use our brains to problem solve and think about how we were going to get to the finish.  After the class completed their own paper maze they created their own by either using squared paper or a lego base.  Once they had created their maze they then wrote a code to show how their maze could be completed.

They had to have a start and a finish and a clear path

They wrote the code on  a white board This is an example of different ability levels, some chose to use arrows and numerals.

This was the progression from paper maze to duplo, then written code.

This student was working at the level of still drawing lots of arrows instead of giving numerals.

Some students added lots of extras to their maze, such as health or booby traps.  Others had tasks to complete along the way.

Google Draw ART-

 We are learning to create art using the tools in  google draw.

Steps:

1.   We took a photo of ourselves or chose an image from the internet
2.  We then used the curved line to go around each shape at a time, e.g around the face, then the eye etc
3.    After we had put a line around each line we would then set the colour to transparent.
4.   When we were finished outlining all of the shapes we then chose a different colour for each shape.
5.   We made sure to improve our work by using the gradient tool.
6.   To finish we chose a colour for our background.

Pick-a-path google slide stories

Writing Pick-a-path stories

Using google slides on Chromebooks

• We have been learning to use google slides.  We brainstormed some different outcomes of common fairy tales and created a pick-a-path story for the reader.

• We learnt how to improve our writing by adding adjectives and nouns to extend our sentences.

• We used colour, images and changed the style of the font to improve the look of our story.

• We learnt how to create links to lead the reader to different chosen slides.

Click on the links to view some of our stories - These student's are Year 3 & 4.

• Luna and Coco's adventure

• Little Red's adventure

• The 2 wise Pigs

Google Drawing and Google Doc

We combined writing with our art.  Look at our cool descriptive writing to match the Taniwha eyes we created on google drawings.

Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality

Today's session was an introduction to Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR).  Surprisingly none of the students new what AR was but when we discussed it some more they realised that they have been using it without actually knowing what it was!

Using unity the students controls turned into gloves.  They were challenged select different shapes and build something with it.  It was quite tricky!

Using AR the students were able to make the merge cube come alive and were able to build blocks on top of it.

The students chose a picture to colour.  They then put the iPad over top of the picture to make it come to life!  They got a real surprise to see how it interacted

Quiver is a great app that has lots of Educational options to relate to themes in the classroom

The volcano erupted.                                                            Wow the world map turned into a globe!

Animation

After spending the term working with small groups teaching them the basics of animation- I took the whole class for the day and we got to put all of the learning into practise.

Room 5 put all of their great knowledge about Animation into their own creative story.  After they had planned what their story was going to be about they created a storyboard and came up with ideas of how they would present it.

                                                                    We used plasticine

                                            Some of us had a go at using green screen with an iPad

Using a book as a background was great- using small plastic toys and pieces were easy to work with.

                                        Retelling a well known story using paper characters was very effective

                                            This lego animation was exactly the same as the storyboard so we were able to                                                                              follow it easily.

                                                Working with lego and plasticine worked well

                It was important to get the camera set up perfectly so it would only capture the scene.
 

All of the animations turned out really well and were all very different.  The class were very proud presenting and sharing them to the class as well as others throughout the school.  Adding the title and credits at the end was a nice touch that some of them did if they had enough time.

Scratch - Coding, using video sensing

Today's computational thinking session I introduced the video sensing extension blocks.

We coded to pat the cat, pop the balloon and then made a band with a cymbal and drum.  The kids had so much fun been interactive with their coding.