Thoughts For The Moment
Yesterday I had the opportunity to show some Scratch projects my students have been working on to our area enrichment person. This person is someone I highly respect and actually sort of owe my job to. A few years back I supply taught in her room and she passed my name around. Not before long I was assigned an LTO contract in her school.
Now I have since changed schools and she is no longer in the classroom but our relationship is much the same; very techie, geeky, and for the most part – online.
My students loved bragging about their homemade video games and the response was positive. Scratch will now be used at the final core enrichment workshop in March. It is very high order thinking and very much procedural writing.
On a side note, and interesting idea was suggested that I brushed off until my drive home yesterday. Why CAT test when the DRA is a focus for instruction. I was left thinking about this one…..
It was inspiring to see your students in action! When we planned our program for this year, we thought we might want to use Scratch for one session, but I hadn’t seen enough of it to be completely convinced. My visit changed that. Upon returning to my office, I immediately emailed my teaching partner and told her that we had to try it. There are so many other great things about it besides the two you mention: real-world application of math concepts and logic, introduction to how programming works without the frustration of syntax errors, a platform that allows experimentation in a low-risk way, plus the introduction to how the open-source concept works. I can’t wait to see the response from our students!
CAT testing has its uses…DRA couldn’t replace it for a few reasons (it’s still pretty subjective, only measures one subject area, etc), but we definitely have something that could. I’m working on that.
And you actually don’t sort of owe me anything. I know an excellent teacher when I see one.
Thanks for the opportunity to see your students in action! Seeing those kids so engrossed in the learning process was an inspiration!