Realistically, during my week PD training with my wonderful team, we discuss, and came to the realization it is okay if you don’t make it to Unit 6, so how should we conclude or assess the students at the end, in this case my 2nd semester.
What we envision as a final project, is to have the students review Units 1-4 projects, and have them pair up in groups of no more than 4, no less than 3 or 2, if you have a smaller class size, and using the problem solving method, have the students come up with their own “unique” lesson plan, design, and model it to the class…very similar to what we do with each other during our PDs, but in this case we are the observer, and the student this time, takes on the role of the teacher.
I like that idea of working in groups and choosing a lesson plan. However, I would have the students go further by providing time for other students or adults in our school community come in to the school. We would organize a computer science night and have different presentations or “lessons” going on in different rooms. Student groups would choose which Unit 1-4 lesson that they feel the strongest connection to and provide the education to their visitors incorporating those CS concepts. They would have to explain the context of the learning, how it connects to CS, they will need to provide equity, inquiry, as well in the planning because they don’t know who their audience will be. Each group would then give a closing quiz to their learners who will also complete a survey of their teacher. Both quiz results and survey results would be combined to reach a final project grade.
I think this would be a lot of fun for the kids and a great way to involve the community! Plus, if multiple groups wanted to do the same concepts it wouldn’t be a problem if we had 10 classes of “How to learn binary” going on at the same time.
We only had a week left and instead of starting unit 6 and not doing it any justice I used the time in two ways.
One: We took the design tools we had learned and students worked on creating a truly unique way to represent their data projects.
Two: Students got to delve deeper into design be it web design, a movie, an poster, or for some a custom t-shirt.
This year I was teaching ECS out of our old art room which had many supplies left in it. So to address the student’s creative needs we had fun. We even had equipment for some basic silk screen shirts. This granted the kids an opportunity to make their final projects really belong to them.
This worked so well I think I am going to encourage such design and artistic applications in final projects or presentations from now on.
We are going to have the students have the Finch robot write the student’s name in cursive. This will be a big challenge because the students don;t really know how to write in cursive, so there is that extra layer of complication.