Teaching Java using Greenfoot to KS4: Week 1

Introduction

We now offer OCR AS Computing to our KS4 pupils as an alternative to the GCSE ICT course. Pupils will study this course over two years; it is normally done in one year by 16-17 year olds but given the excellent students we have here, I think they will cope. Just under 50% of the pupils opted to do this course when they had to make their choices at the end of Year 9. There is no coursework in the OCR AS computing course (which ironically means we will be able to do more practical work as we won't have to jump through hoops).

The pupils are all girls in a high-performing grammar school. They have all had some experience writing code in previous years; they have used Scratch to write a shoot-em game, VB.net to produce a web browser, Logicator for flow charts and html to produce web sites. Pupils on this Computing course will have three 50 minute lessons a week in both year 10 and 11; one lesson is intended to be a pure theory lesson and they will also have a double lesson lasting 1 hour 40 minutes in a computer suite. I expect them to do about an hour or so a week of homework. Pupils will primarily be learning Java. The main IDE we will be using is Greenfoot (excellent and free). We will be working from the Michael Kolling Greenfoot textbook and using resources from the Greenfoot website. We may dabble with other languages and IDEs.

The broad plan for the first year is to program program program by teaching pupils how to write computer games. I intend covering as much of the Greenfoot textbook as possible and as much of the Programming unit (OCR Syllabus F452) in year 1, and then the theory parts (F451) in year 2. By the end of the first year, I want the pupils to be able to confidently write their own computer games.

Sunday 11 September 2011

Week 1 - A history of programming

The course begins! In the first double, books, folders, dividers and paper were handed out and we all got organised. Although we were in the computer suite, I thought we had better put programming and computing in context before starting. I watched the excellent Stanford University Lecture 4 on programming methodology the night before the lesson and then prepared a mini lecture suitable for 14 year olds.

They listened to me summarise 4000 years of computational history in 20 minutes, including a bit about Ada Byron and Charles Babbage, 1971 and the microprocessor and the pace of change from then til now. I also introduced Java and the idea of source code, translation, object code as well as OO, classes and objects. Pupils then did a bit of their own research and answered a few questions.

This all took about an hour. We spent the rest of the lesson opening Greenfoot and playing; creating objects, changing code, compiling code and running it.

For the theory lesson, I introduced classes, objects, inheritance and methods. We looked at some examples of different class diagrams. I even managed to squeeze a bit of kinetic thinking skills activities in, by calling out methods for a pupil class, and they had to do the action, taking note of whether the method returned a value or was void. Homework was to get pupils to read through Chapter 1 in the Greenfoot textbook.

All in all, I'm happy with the start. The only problem was a few pupils hadn't set up Greenfoot at home for one reason or another. One thing I did discover is that there is a Greenfoot version that will run from a USB stick (available from the Greenfoot website) and that helped a few pupils who were having installation problems. Next year, I will make sure part of the options application process involves confirming that a pupil has installed Greenfoot at home and done the 'Getting started' tutorial.

Next week, pupils will start working through the activities in Chapter 1 of the textbook. For the theory lesson, I'll be doing some practice exercises on methods (void, return values, parameters, parameter lists) and introducing datatypes. I also need to set up a VLE course for Greenfoot.