2. Week 02 - Scratch Quiz¶
This week I worked on creating a quiz using Scratch for my class.
The Quiz¶
This week we practiced using block coding. It took some practice, but I was able to make a very simple quiz using Scratch. I have been using ScratchJr for years in primary school, and I am very used to the simplicity of that APP, but I wanted to challenge myself and step into Scratch. With the help of the tutorials and Youtube, I was able to create a simple quiz about the parts of a plant. If I knew how and had more time, I’d love to add photos to the quiz, sounds, multiple choice questions, etc. With the power of time and Youtube, I’m sure I could figure them out! Feel free to check out the coding and play the quiz here as well.
Photos¶
I tried to add photos, but the website won’t accept them. Sorry!
Reflection Questions¶
When you design a learning activity how do you take into account diversity? Could you describe one learning situation in which you did not take into account diversity in planning? How did you solved the situation?
When designing activities, I am not taking an active approach to think about diversity, but I think that my lessons are automatically reflecting diversity in their design. My classroom is not very diverse with its students, as they are 95% Chinese and the 5% are teachers kids. However, when creating lessons, I try to make sure the content and outcomes are reachable by everyone. However, this isn’t really diversity, its more of differentiation. There was one time last year that we had a guest speaker come in, and he gave a nice long lesson about different types of plants. What I didn’t consider is that one student was new to the school, and didn’t speak Chinese. During the presentation he was bored and didn’t learn much. His little brother came in for a similar speaker in the afternoon, and I asked his homeroom teacher who is bilingual to sit next to him and make sure he is able to understand the key points. Advanced planning for this situation would always be better!
What aspects would you need to take into consideration if you have kids with a) learning disabilities, b) physical disabilities, c)emotional disabilities when preparing your DF activities
Kids with learning, physical, and emotional disabilities need to be supported during all lessons. Students with learning disabilities might take longer, or might be unable to understand the lesson objectives. To support them, their objectives can be suited to their level to make sure that they are still learning and growing during all lessons. Students with physical disabilities might not be able to do physically create things during DF lessons. A common way to support these students would be to team them up with a partner for all lessons that they might not be able to physically do. For example if they have cerebral palsy, they might not be able to control their fingers enough to use an iPad to draw. They can work with a partner who might be consistantly chatting with them asking what they would like for them to do, while the partner creates it on the screen. If possible, maybe the student with physical disabilities can do simplier activities, maybe making with different materials, or getting support while doing that activity. Students with emotional disabilities isn’t something that can be fixed during a lesson with extra support. These students need a consistant positive reinforcement, and a true knowledge of what upsets them, so that whatever topic you are discussing in lessons don’t trigger them.
How do you usually assess learning activities which involve digital fabrication? Which is your favourite method? What aspects do you think you can change in your assessment practices?
Assessments are always informal and ongoing in primary school. Summative assessments do happen usually at end of units, but there are many different ways they can happen. In primary, I rarely use paper assessments. I usually give them some project based assessment, with a rubric that shows the students how to succeed. I like to give assessments based on the whatever program we are learning. For example, we are learning about ScratchJr, so I would make an assessment based on using ScratchJr. At the same time, the students were learning about the life cycle of a butterfly. So, for the assessment, we used ScratchJr to show our learning of the butterflies life cycle. My favorite method, I guess would be the most commonly used by me, is having them make a poster to show their learning for science classes. I like for them to make posters in partners, and present it to the class. Ideally, I try to keep everyones posters different, so when they present, all students can learn from each other. For example in Grade 1, we are learning about different kinds of animals (mammals, birds, fish, etc). So each group will learn about one of the kinds of animals, draw a poster, and present it to the rest of the class. I think I will need to start giving more pen and paper assessments, especially to the older grades, as we are not trying to implement more Chinese national curriculum standards and goals as well.
What could be the challenges when integrating programming in your classes?
The biggest challenges are finding programs that the students can use, as well as the technology to use. Programming is most commonly done on computers, but our students only have iPads. Most programming is using very difficult and confusing English vocabulary that our students don’t have. ScratchJr is perfect because it does not use language when making block coding, but even Scratch will be challenging because students don’t understand words like “variable,” or ” axis” etc.