Gamefroot & Coding Clubs

Here is the revised version below for you to try out. Today we worked with the Gamefroot peeps Dave and Dan. It was great to meet Dave in the flesh as I have followed his "Gamefroot Dave" tutorials on YouTube.

I managed to add music, text boxes, a points system and a non-playing character. My next job is to make the kiwi react if the player lands on its head, and to make the text box transparent.

Teachers from Ilminster Intermediate School and Gisborne Intermediate School have attended these game dev sessions as they are starting Coding Clubs after school this term at their schools. This is an exciting project for these two schools and one that we are looking forward to supporting. I'm sure the students whoa re keen to join this club will be zooming ahead faster than I have been able.

I wrote previously about gaming and my lack of it so I am unsure of what makes a great game and what appeals to kids. I recently came across this blog post Game Design in the classroom - 8 steps to get started. The thing that caught my eye was that step #1 is to play list of games and there is a PDF with links to online games in categories.  This would be great way to get going. Now all I need is the time!

Kumara to the Marae by Cheryl Torrie / Remix in Gamefroot

Coding - Why Teach It?

So why teach coding?  Coding is a word we hear lots in schools and is one part of the revised New Zealand Curriculum (NZC). When using the term "coding" teachers are referring to computational thinking (CT) and designing and developing digital outcomes (DDDO).

The NZC says " It's important that students have opportunities to be innovative designers and creators of digital solutions – moving beyond solely being users and consumers of digital technologies." NZC

Here is my take on why we should teach these...

1. Coding is another language. Language is about communication. Giving and receiving directions teaches communication and logical thinking. Students have to plan and organise thought then communicate them.

2. Coding teaches problem solving. This is where they go into the learning pit and not only are debugging or solving a myriad of problems, they are also learning to be resilient and to be persistent in their endeavours - see #7!

3. Coding fosters creativity. This is the gold! Students are not following a formula. They have opportunities to experiment, make mistakes, remake, add on to an original idea. 

4. Coding and maths go hand in hand. Think of Scratch and the x and y axis. Think of Scratch Jnr and using the grid to code precise movements for sprites. Think about abstract ideas and visualising. 

5. Coding assists academic performance. Students have to plan and organise their thoughts

6. It's in the New Zealand Curriculum. Was meant to be incorporated into the school's curriculum in 2020. So we should see it happening now.

7. Teachers can't smooth the path to success! Many times in classes I have seen students having to problem solve and debug, and because the teachers have very few skills if any in this area and are not able to code, teachers cannot jump in and do it for their students. I think that sometimes when coding this is the first really hard task students have had to do without teacher intervention or over-scaffolding. 

Research & Development - is it meant to be fun?

 I have been developing my Gamefroot game and aiming to be one page ahead of the students. I am still in the learning pit and have been fortunate to have some students teach me how to extend my coding. And what fun it has been!

Here it is...>

Kumara to the Marae by Cheryl Torrie / Full screen / Remix in Gamefroot

Gamefroot and Game Dev

 Today I attended a day's training with Dan from Gamefroot. Locally, there is interest in establishing a Game Dev Club/Coding Club. What a neat opportunity this would be for our tamariki. 

Our first activity was part one of game development - the "Wall o' Games". Lots of fun and a strategy to get creative juices and collaboration going. 

 

Then onto coding in Gamefroot with a blank canvas. I really was in the learning pit! Not only with the coding aspect but the whole gaming thing as well. I do not play online games and never have so felt at a bit of a loss as to what the elements of a game are and what they do, how you win/lose, and what is a spike?  Along with spike there was a whole lot of other gaming lingo I did not understand. 

My limited experience in Scratch Jnr on iPads and Scratch on Chromebooks helped a wee bit in terms of me knowing what coding blocks are, but as to what they did - that's a whole new world. And then I scrolled down some of the lists of coding block as and see the millions I didn't use and wonder - what are they for? 

Maybe I need to sit with the mokopuna when they are here in the July holidays and get them to talk me through their favourite games and why they like them.

Anyway...here is what I managed to do today which is basically the first half of 8 weeks of Dev Club mahi. Not bad for a newbie!

Click here  to play the first 2 levels of my game. Let me know in the comments what my game needs. 

Create Empowers Learners

 

 This term our staff meeting is based on "Create Empowers Learners".  

In this term's staff meetings the teachers are involved in using Google Apps and third party apps to create. Their creativity is shared below on the slides.

Reading Across the Curriculum

At the end of term 1 we attended the Manaiakalani Teacher Only Day at Glen Taylor School.  The day was about exploring the topic of effective reading practice. The facilitators presented a workshop during the day and our Tairāwhiti team's work was about reading across the curriculum.

T-Shaped literacy is an "emerging research-practice hypothesis for literacy instruction" from the Woolf Fisher research team. This work has come from their many years of research on the Manaiakalani Programme. 

We wanted the participants to develop text sets for a topic or inquiry they will be doing in term 2, or to develop a text set for a resource they have already used. This was so they could use resources they have already at their finger tips and extend the text set to include multi-modal texts in a T-shaped literacy framework.

Getting the Talk Going in Reading

At the Manaiakalani Teacher Only Day at Glen Taylor School I participated in Robyn Anderson and Chantal Millward's workshop on "Getting the Talk Going in Reading". Robyn teaches year 7&8 and Chantal teaches New Entrants at Panmure Bridge School.

Their workshop was around the notion of how can we provide opportunities for our students to talk with each other while they are completing reading activities which helps them unpack the text by sharing their thinking and listening to the thoughts of others.

Over the years the Woolf Fisher team have presented provocations to us that emerge from data. One of them has been to generate collaboration and discussion between students rather than just between teacher and student as is usually observed in classes. 

Chantal asked how can we provide more talk in the junior school? She acknowledged that talk is prominent in junior classes but how could they emphasise and build on the talk they already do within the 4 elements of reading to, shared reading, guided reading and independent reading.

She did this by using 3 scaffold questions based around

• Opinion

• Comparison

• Identify

You will find links to her blog posts and class site about these in the presentation below.

Senior reading with Robyn Anderson covered adding modal verbs to the question stem to encourage deeper thinking. She uses dialogic conversations to dig into the more challenging texts that this age group read.

Of particular interest to me in among all this gold was the summarising exercise Robyn uses. Students have to negotiate in this task to use fewer words to co-construct a summary.