Today I witnessed a computer lesson that my prac students participated in. They have this class once a week for 40 minutes. The lessons are taught by a specialist teacher, while the regular classroom teacher has RFF time.
The room was filled with about 30 computers – enough for one each child to have their own. The teacher also has a designated computer linked to a projector, so anything performed on it can be projected immediately onto a huge space on the wall. There was also a large space on the floor so all the children can sit down.
The structure of the room enabled lessons to be taught smoothly. They began with an introduction and demonstration from the teacher, while students were sitting on the floor. If I was ever teaching a similar lesson, I would try to do the same thing, because children cannot help but want to play on the computers as soon as they are within arms reach! This strategy reduces that urge by removing the distraction so they can watch the demonstration and hear instructions.
The structure of the room enabled lessons to be taught smoothly. They began with an introduction and demonstration from the teacher, while students were sitting on the floor. If I was ever teaching a similar lesson, I would try to do the same thing, because children cannot help but want to play on the computers as soon as they are within arms reach! This strategy reduces that urge by removing the distraction so they can watch the demonstration and hear instructions.
The activity that the student were learning about was using different websites (such as Cool Text and also The Graffiti Creator) on the internet to create word art. They were shown each of the different sites, and some of the options available to play around with. They end product was a poster, which had used their creativity to display their own name written as least 8 times and in different ways.
The lesson was well managed, by providing students with a list of links to the various websites they would need to visit, which saved a lot of time that would be wasted on typing in long URLs so it was instead used on practising the real skills.
The skill set being practised is quite basic, but builds important skills that students will need to complete other assignments, especially being able to navigate around websites, and recognise the way they are set up. It also linked to other skills like copying and pasting, using word documents to format the orientation, wrapping, order and cropping of images. Importantly, students learnt and practised the ‘undo’ function on word, which is essential so that they are able to try new features without fear of losing all their existing work!
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