November is OUR Hour of Code month!

I blurred our Gr 3 students faces using https://www2.lunapic.com/

Although we do Coding lessons at school every week with our Grades 1 - 7 classes, we always participate in the Hour of Code. 

What is the Hour of Code? 

The Hour of Code is a one-hour tutorial designed for all ages in over 45 languages. It is run in 180 countries from 7 - 12  December - although one can do it any time.  We always choose November at our school. There are loads of different options based on your students' age etc on https://code.org/learn. The Hour of Code is a global movement to introduce people of all ages to computer programming in a fun way, and it certainly achieves that. Our students love it.

The image below, taken from https://hourofcode.com/za shows how popular the event is already... 

Where to find Hour of Code resources

1.  As mentioned, my favourite website to find Hour of Code activities is https://code.org/learn. They show what is suited to each age. 

2. The Minecraft Hour of Code activities on www.code.org are always pupular with my students https://code.org/minecraft. 

3. Jacqui Murray on her website 'Ask a Tech teacher' has some great ideas for the Hour of Code: https://askatechteacher.com/hour-of-code-heres-why/#more-63085. She also has a page of Coding ideas per grade on her website: https://bit.ly/3HYlzeB

So,, if you are a teacher, and your students have access to devices - why not try out the Hour of Code this year. Your students will love you for it!

The Grade 3s researched endangered animals - using www.kids.kiddle.co

For this lesson I wanted the Grade Threes to research an endangered animal, and to try and rephrase what they read in their own words. This is a task one needs to start as early as possible at school so that students don't get into the habit of plagiarising by copy and pasting.

How did we go about the lesson?

1. After finding out what the students already knew about endangered animals we watched a video and answered questions about them. The video was the engaging, short video entitled ‘Endangered animals’ by the SciShow Kids: https://bit.ly/3Ed7hUU.

2. The class was then given a selection of animals to choose from - gorilla, leopard, rhino, sea turtle, giant panda, tiger, or blue whale, - and they found out more about the relevant animal using the search engine Kiddle: https://kids.kiddle.co/.

3. After reading about their selected animal using the Kiddle browser, the students opened their template downloaded from Oakdome.com entitled ‘Animal Research Paperless Graphic Organizer’ https://bit.ly/31aajdZ . They then filled in their answers as far as possible in their own words by researching the key words in the template.

4. Finally they turned in their work so that I could take a closer look at it. They did well I thought,

Here are some examples of the finished products

The examples are by Kaleb, Carol, Elia and Lily. (The students always use their online names when they produce work in ICT) 

Post settings Labels Grade 3,research skills, No matching suggestions Published on 11/7/21 8:36 PM Permalink Location Options Post: EditPost published

The Grade 2s ceated posters about the National Symbols, using Google Slides

The Grade 2s recently created presentations about South Africa using Google Slides. Today I wanted to see if they could remember seven of the national symbols and present them neatly, each with an image, as a poster in Google Slides.  

Skills focus

• copy and paste
• search images
• find a suitable image and paste it into Google Slides
• create a light-coloured, abstract background
• resize images

Examples of the finished products

The examples below are from Julian, Kayla and Kaleb (the students always use their online names for anything that goes online in ICT).

 

Good work, Grade 2!

The Grade Ones love Coding

At our school the Grade Ones start coding straight away when they come to school...and they can't even read yet. It is amazing!

What is the Pre-Reader Express Course in www.code.org?

This is a sequence of 11 lessons appropriate for students who either aren't reading yet or still need help reading. It is part of www.code.org. I am the computer teacher at our school and I love using the free www.code.org offerings. 

What is Code.org? 

The Code.org website says, "Code.org® is a nonprofit dedicated to expanding access to computer science in schools and increasing participation by women and underrepresented minorities. Our vision is that every student in every school has the opportunity to learn computer science, just like biology, chemistry or algebra.' Code.org.

What I like about www.code.org is that you can choose a course for your classes and add your whole class, and at any time you can see exactly where each one is up to in the course. The students work at their own pace so they don't feel rushed or inadequate, and I circulate so that I can help them if they have any questions.  Each lesson in code.org has a lesson plan for the teacher to go through. 

The Pre-Reader Coding course captures the class's names and shows their progress

After my Grade 1 students have completed the Pre-Reader course we will go on to using Scratch Junior.