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.