If I counted correctly, twelve students attended today, but I think we may have lost one from an earlier session. We began promptly, everyone resumed their projects from last week, and the good news is that we finally completed project one.
The main issue for a few students continues to be a reluctance to actually follow the instructions in the material provided. They would rather ask me or the teacher what to do next rather than follow the worksheet. Even if we refer them back to the worksheets, I’m not sure they really understand why they are doing something yet, they are just trying to get to the finished game as quickly as possible so that they can play it.
On the other end of the scale, there are others who work through the instructions and complete the project. Their progress spurs on the others in the room who then ask how they did something. There are also a couple of students who have now downloaded Scratch at home so want to move onto new projects. For others who’ve not downloaded it yet but want to, we are planning to send students home with a letter to parents explaining Scratch next week, giving a brief FAQ on what it is and why they want to download it.
I think at the start of the next project I will use the projector again to work through the first step of the next worksheet line by line, making it clear that I’m following it to the letter and have them follow at the same pace. Also whereas before I was quite open to letting them make changes to sprites, names and backgrounds as they went, it soon became clear that this later becomes confusing when trying to keep them following the worksheets. So my new approach will be to ask that they complete the project as it written in the worksheet, then afterwards they can customise it however they wish.
However, as we’ve only got a few weeks to go before Christmas, I might wait until January before we start project two, and in the next few weeks I may get them to work on a Christmas themed project. Code Club posted a level 2 project on their website, but I may simplify it to a level 1 project for my own club.
