Our 2006 Y9 Control UoW Used Flowol to program sequences of lights for the ‘Party in the Park’ mimic [shown] for a half term (6+ lessons). Y9s are on a carousel with drama (swapping each half term) so I taught this unit twice.
The lights provide a really ‘loose’ or open end task which requires both creativity and programming expertise. Anyone can get the lights to flash, but developing routines involves dreaming up some combinations and then learning the programming techniques. The first time I taught it the kids got off to a flying start and were exited by the task, but for most for those the lesson was really dragging after about no. 4, because they didn’t have the structured thinking necessary to understand what they were trying to do.
I felt that the UoW was weak in defining specific tasks for the kids to acheive which especially impacted the lower ability kids. So, the second time around, I spent time developing their ‘sequences vocabulary’ introducing words to describe sequences such as Fill, Fill LtoR, Fill RtoL, Splash (ie. Fill from centre), Travel, bounce etc. The purpose of this was to firstly get the kids to recognise a sequence and thus give them a specific task for them to acheive.
Add a new Introductory Mimic?
Even so, some just didn’t manage to regognise even basic sequences. For this reason I think we should use a different mimic to build up the skills. eg. Control a crane so it can pick up a brick and put it in a box. In such a sequence the child is either successfull or not and they know what to aim for. When they have aceived this then they can go onto the creative artistic context.
Y9 Modules are meant to be integrated ie. kids use a number of applications to complete a project. Out UoW is very Flowol based and the only other application used it Word, to gather evidence. To encourage assessment of the quality of the show rather than just the programming skills it would be much better to use Screencasting (MS Media Encoder) to capture evidence of the quality of their show. This would also be more ‘integrated’.
NQT support
Lastly, as an NQT teaching this Unit, it was very difficult to build up skills as I didn’t have a copy of the software to practice with at home. A laptop or a disk (with the right mimic) would have helped immensely and allowed me to develop more resources.
Resources
In a similar vein, there were very few worksheets that the kids could use to work independently, and some of those actually taught poor programming methods – eg. creating 2 switches where 1 would suffice.
Of course the most important thing would be to actually have a party and get a light box just like the mimic that could be controlled by Flowol.
Would be great to hear of other colleagues experiences
Keyword: KS3
Simon got the students to use the traffic light mimic instead of the stage mimic. This was a much more useful exercise. Good link with citizenship (road safety/awareness?).
It’s really important to assess the students progress every lesson (AFL or teacher) so that we have evidence for reports and tracking.
Great idea to link with technology. HOWEVER – we will only have four lessons of control next year if we are stuck with the carousel set-up.