Revise, Revise Oh Lesson Plan

Third time’s the charm. I tweak the original plan to be more “fun” for students. The original unit plan was very structured and very focused on me talking a lot with sometime for student exploration of the programming language. I chalk it up to years of learning programming the same way in every class I participated in. Something about programming and structure just goes so well. Needless to say there wasn't much wiggle room which didn't feel right.

I talked it out with my mentor teacher who provided a simple solution. If I focus less on the structure and more student self learning it maybe helpful and free ranged for creative process that is game design. I changed the core theme from just programming to actual game design. I going to teach basic concepts about game design like space and mechanics and work it into the coding.

This wasn't the complete version when I finished the second draft. It was a little too open ended with way too much freedom and too many places for students to get lost in black holes. I needed some way to direct the students learning. Again I talked to my mentor who suggested that I have goals or task for students to complete each day. Thus I started the third draft of the unit plan.

I went through each day and thought about what were reasonable goals for the students to reach. I wrote out a few ideas and then picked what seemed most appropriate. I came to the conclusion that one day didn't need a goal because it was a focus on exploring and seeing different examples of games. The final day task is just the completion of the game and end to the makers project.

I spent a couple days working on this unit plan. I want it to be perfect even if it will not work out so great in the actual practice. The item I want to take away from here is the concept of strategies and how different strategies can change the way the classroom feels and how one teaches. My original strategy was structured, I say jump they jump but it seemed close minded and not a very good fit for me in theory. The second strategy was to give the students way more power over their learning, and it seemed a little bit like chaos with an end goal that may never be reached. The third strategy is a midway point where their is a target students need to reach but they have creative reign over their learning and how they plan to meet those goals. Again this is just the plan and not how it may work on in practice, thus it will be fun to find out how will my actions match my mental thought process.

I'm also lucky my supervisor is visiting that day!