Tips, tricks and howto

[Matthew Trojanovich]

I haven't seen a thread like this yet in the group and thought it might be helpful to start one.

I've run a Code Club for a little over a year now and have accumulated a grab-bag of techniques to help me lead fun and productive sessions.

I'm not a teacher by trade - some of things things are probably old-hat to any seasoned teacher - but for me, discovering these were a result of trial and error.  The facilitators provided by the school (my club takes place on Friday afternoons in the ICT suite) have generally been minimally involved (alas). 

Care to add to this list?  Please do!

Keeping/holding attention

• I often dedicate the first 10 minutes of club to a story problem, riddle or puzzle that I write up on screen.  I find that this provides a good way to kick off each session; it gives the inevitable late stragglers a chance to arrive without disrupting the actual Scratch material that we then move on it, and I require that screens be turned off during this time.
• I now include a music track with every game we build.  I found that this wasn't a feature of the Term 1 and Term 2 examples provided by CodeClub.  I was initially reluctant to do this because of the obvious noise it creates, but setting up a music or sound track is a) easy, b) ensures they use and understand loops early on, and c) makes the games more enjoyable.  They are prone to spend more time than I'd like on the sound, but I'd rather that than spending a lot of time in the drawing panel (a decision I present them with explicitly).

Balancing gaming with learning

• I occasionally use gaming as a work incentive.  Something to the effect of "if you show me that you're working cooperatively and attentively today, we'll spend the last 15 minutes ... gaming!".  This is a tough bargain for me to keep because it is usually the case that the last 15 minutes involve valuable learning for the kids, but I stick to it since a deal is a deal.  It also forces me to focus and not cram so much into a session, which is generally a good thing.
• I dedicate a few sessions to sharing and remixing, or will, similarly, devote the last 15 minutes of a session to remixing other's games in the Scratch community.
• I have chosen to restrict gaming to those found within the Scratch community.  I figure that the kids can game in other environments on their own time.  This was particularly difficult with Friv.  While Friv is blocked at my school, friv4school.com is not.  Some Friv games are fairly redeeming, but they're just too attention-grabbing during Codeclub sessions and, of course, you can't see the source code.

Mixing it up

• I now keep a calendar of topics with which to augment my regular Codeclub curriculum.  Topics range from alternative numbering systems (eg, base-2, base-8), to an in-depth look at HTML coloring schemes to What is a Printed Circuit Board to What is the Internet and What is a Search Engine.  During these sessions, screens usually need to be turned off.
  
• code.org - between sessions, or if there is some school event on in which I expect a number of the kids to be missing, we'll pop into code.org instead.
• sweets - I've started bringing sweets every so often to Codeclub.  As a parent myself, I'm loathe to pack them full of sugar, but I've found some sweets that aren't so bad.  For example Necco candy buttons (I'm American, so we grew up with these and I pick up packs of them when I'm back in the US) are very small. They're arranged like dots on an old-school computer punch-card, so this allows me to entertain that topic, or to use them for binary counting contests (who can tell me what this binary number is first!)
• video - I try to show a YouTube video on our overhead every so often (yes, I had to get YT unblocked for my username).  In fact, I'd like to do this much more frequently but haven't been able to find or make a suitable playlist (and I've searched on this Group as well as others). Striking that balance between educational, fun and not-a-talking-head-promo has been a challenge.

Cheers,
Matthew   

[Jason Thomas]

Some great tips there Matthew, thanks for sharing!

[Dan Powell]

Thanks Matthew, really useful and I'll definitely be using this at my club.

I think it'll be a while before I can add anything useful, but will do when I have something!

On Tuesday, April 21, 2015 at 12:03:34 PM UTC+1, Matthew Trojanovich wrote: