Tuesday 15 November 2016

Colaboration, the pros and cons of working in partners

Task 4:
In our original plan we had envisioned the students working together in partners to plan and develop their programs. Because the first few lessons were done individually it wasn't until task 4 that students were actually placed in partnerships. We found we had mixed results. Most pairs worked well together and I saw some good discussion occurring as they were planning. Unfortunately most got camera shy as soon as I pulled out the camera. There was only one pair that was not working together well and as a result the student who was removed from the activity and the remaining student was paired with another student from a pair who had already completed the activity. During the programming phase, I noticed that there was a lot of off task behavior by students who were not operating the computer at the time, especially with the students who struggled with attention issues.. We decided to try giving all students computers  after the paired planning phase during the next task to see if on task behavior improved.

Below are some short videos of the Task 2 planning and programming:

Planning Together:

We have a plan:

After students were finished with their task, they were encouraged to try to figure out an extra challenge:
Time for a Challenge - a good idea:



Task 2 Student Work samples