Computing
After returning from half term, we had an opportunity to work more independently on the skills we practiced before half term. Before half term, we were asked to create an animation however, this was something we’d very little experience with it so depended on the expert.
In this session, children were able to complete the task with minimal support showing they had learned how to successfully put the blocks together to create an animation.
Today we continued with our how to be safe online unit and focussed on online communication. We discussed what different forms of communication we can do online and then we explored the advantages and disadvantages of online communication. We discussed why some people use emojis, memes and gifs to communicate and even had a go at creating some of our own. We watched a clip which showed us the importance of asking permission from someone before posting pictures etc… Next, we looked at some different scenarios and judged whether the comments were negative and positive. We discussed the impact that negative comments have on people’s mental health and turned the negative comments into more positive ones. Finally, we talked about what to do if we came across any negative online communication.
This afternoon, we continued with our computing unit where we had to create n animation following some instructions. Erik was our expert because he is a whizz on scratch which meant he was able to coach some of the children through the steps. This is something we will continue with next time as we’re hoping now that we’ve been shown how to do it, we can be bit more independent next time.
On Friday afternoon, we moved on to the next unit of computing which is about coding. We had some time to tinker with scratch before working through some activities. One of these activities was to create a loop of code which basically means that the sprite will continually do an action (on a loop). We really enjoyed being able to tinker with and explore scratch and look forward to exploring this more in future computing lessons.
To finish off our unit we had a quiz to test our computing knowledge. I was so impressed with how much you could recall. Well done!
It’s been a busy week for us this week but don’t just take my word for it! Here’s what the crew thinks of it…
In our latest computing session we learnt all about what debugging is (which doesn’t actually have anything to do with real life bugs!), how we identify them in an algorithm and how we can fix them! We then had a go at doing some ‘debugging’ ourselves. We worked in pairs and used maps and directions to spot the ‘bug’. We were really good at this! As a crew we then had a go at rewriting the correct algorithm. We then finished the lesson by sharing everything that we had learnt about ‘debugging’!
In computing, we completed the next 2 lessons which helped us understand what is a website and understand the use of a router. We discussed how it worked before drawing a diagram to help us understand how it works.
Today in our computing lesson we learnt about what debugging is and how we identify them in an algorithm. We used maps and directions to spot the bug and thought about how we rewrite the algorithm.
In Crew Godley, we continued our computing work and discussed what decomposition was. The children enjoyed explaining what they had already learnt about computers.
We first drew pictures using 2D shapes and discussed how we could break this down for someone to follow. We then created step by step instructions for our partners to follow.
We discussed that we have to break down big tasks into small chunks to make it easier to complete.
