[Sarah Fleming]

https://makecode.com/_W3yeh6TY43PX

Game type: Timed Chaser
Game title: Catch the healthy food
Curriculum area and objective: SPHE (healthy eating) The children will identify healthy food and develop computational thinking skills and coding skills through a game.
Simple storyboard:
Location – green background – thought the colour associated well with healthy food.
Player: a little human controlled by arrows
Game elements: There are 3 healthy foods (apple, strawberries and cherries) that the human has to chase around and catch. When they catch the healthy food they gain one point. There are 2 unhealthy (doughnut and ice cream) if they catch them their score reduces by one. When the foods are caught they move to another location on the screen. The aim is to gain as many points as possible in 30 seconds. They must try to avoid the unhealthy foods.

Computational thinking: I used debugging as when I started to add more foods they were not moving to a different location on the screen and were covering the human sprite so the score was increasing very fast without having to move the sprite.

• This reply was modified 3 months, 4 weeks ago by Sarah Fleming.

[Sarah Fleming]

I created the Dice microbit tutorial – https://makecode.microbit.org/_LuFD19Vy32uH you have to change to code to show numbers 1 – 6 and there is a shake function that makes it simulate real life rolling of a dice.

I chose this tutorial as I am interested in developing a bank of materials for the junior end of my school – I started with the clap lights tutorial but I felt it was too complex for infants and there were too many steps so I changed to the dice tutorial.

In infants we do a lot of work on number and we use dice all the time so a felt this tutorial would be a good one to try. To make it an integrated STEM activity – forces used for shaking (science), create their own container to shake a dice (engineering), number work and make a basic graph of what number appears when the shake the dice (maths) and I think they could work on changing and modifying the numbers (technology).

[Sarah Fleming]

Hi Rachel,

This is absolutely amazing, I wouldn’t have thought about doing this with junior infants. I think the work with patterns is very clever as it is such a big part of junior infant maths. We have done a lot of work with schools of sanctuary – send love and this would also integrate well with this.

You could also integrate picture books and stories such as in my heart.

[Sarah Fleming]

I really like your plan to use CT activities in areas other than just STEM lessons as it is very easy to get focused on STEM as a stand alone activity. presenting at your staff meeting is something we have started this year and have found it really helpful as it allows people to share ideas when everyone is present however I have found that at times people don’t feel as comfortable to ask questions in a staff meeting format so an idea could be to have a shared document with your staff where they could share ideas after the meeting.

[Sarah Fleming]

LAOS collaborative teacher practice

I think with the new curriculum coming it it provides an excellent opportunity for our school to look at collaborative practice within our school in the area of STEM to ensure all students are getting an opportunity to develop their STEM skills.

My school has taken in junior infants for the first time this year and we have created a progression pathway from JI – 2nd class using beebots to develop computational thinking in which the the skills the children learn in each class level are revised and built upon as they move up the school.

I think I had always thought of computational thinking development as needing a iPads or robotics but it is wonderful too see there can be so many hands on activities that do not need IT resources – I definitely need to work on developing more of those types of activities. Especially in the older class levels when iPads and chrome books are introduced in my school they are relied on for playing maths games etc.

Next year I plan to teach one unplugged computational thinking activity a fortnight. Assess the progress through observations and student feedback. I will present the activities with my staff at the halloween staff meeting and encourage discussion on how to use activities to develop computational thinking across each class level. I will create a shared document for staff to share ideas and see what staff would be interested in work on a plan to promote STEM throughout the school. I think it is important to take small steps to build buy in rather than trying to push too much stuff on people all at once.

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