Today my specialism group and I spent the day in a local primary school to put our lesson plans we made in our ICT seminars into practice.
The lesson plans were all based on algorithms and we used Bee-Bots in order to teach this. In pairs we taught our lesson to groups of 6-8 year 1 children. We taught the same lesson three times throughout the day and I found that with every lesson taught I felt more confident in my own teaching and after every one I felt the lesson went slightly better than the previous.
The first lesson started off really well but didn't end quite so well with the children losing interest. I believe this was at first the lesson was not engaging enough to fill the time we had. This did get better with each lesson as we came up with more engaging twists to keep them interested. When I teach Bee-Bots again I will definitely look at creating a grid for the Bee-Bots to travel on instead of just having physical objects in the way. From observing other groups, the children seemed more engaged with having a grid/map on the table. This may have also made it easier to record their algorithms.
As part of our lesson we got the children to name their Bee-Bots in the hope that this would mean they would treat the robots with more respect (links to the curriculum). One group with had the names Elsa, Bob and Ibrahimovic! (The Swedish footballer) which was amusing!
At the end of the first lesson the class teacher asked them what an algorithm was. A child that was part of my group put their hand up and gave a correct answer which was not only a reliving moment but a proud one as well.
I also got a first in my very first assignment at University!
