Teaching Java using Greenfoot to KS4: November 2011

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.

Friday 25 November 2011

Week 9 - WHILE ENDWHILE and REPEAT UNTIL

We have been practising our loops, looking at how WHILE and REPEAT UNTIL work, writing little programs and then dry-running them in class. I then set the pupils challenges in the computer room. These required them to work in small groups to get problems solved using any of the iterative loops.

I also stumbled across another method of helping them to become more self-sufficient and confident to have a code writing their own code. Although the challenges I set were fairly short and easy to solve, I asked them all to extend each challenge in any way they wanted. So for example, some pupils were confident using CASE so put a menu system at the front of a challenge. Someone else knew how to use an IF statement, so asked the user a question and displayed the answer, if it was right or wrong. Others simply printed things on the screen and changed the text and background colour.

I liked this, not least because by the end of the lesson, they all ended up experimenting with producing different Matrix screens! I kid you not. This potentially boring lesson turned into a lot of fun, as they worked out that by using loops and the TAB keyword, they could produce all kinds of patterns on the screen.

Monday 14 November 2011

Week 8 - FOR loops and dry-running code

This week, pupils have been writing programs using FOR loops. They've were given some pseudo-code of problems and had to dry run them using trace tables. They then had to convert the programs into code and get them working. One of the problems involved them using a nested FOR loop. Most pupils found these tasks fairly straightforward. They just needed a bit of practice and to be nudged into playing around with the code, trying out different numbers, trying to produced error messages and so on.

After FOR loops, we will press on with the other iterative constructions. I'm trying to get the pupils to write as many pseudo-code programs as possible and to get used to dry-running solutions. They are getting better at it!