Week 2, Day 4: "Scratch"

The decision to teach Turtle Art yesterday was the first time our team was split. Half our team was excited about Turtle Art possibilities, it's ability to transform into homework assignments, etc. The other half of us thought Turtle Art was a fun game, but not applicable to the classroom. Should we even teach a program that might frustrate the teachers and leave them further behind in the dust?

As you read, Turtle Art exceeded all of our expectations. While the geometric math was difficult to review, the application of Turtle Art to the classroom clicked immediately.

Today we were split again. The teachers certainly needed another day practicing Turtle Art; but would we simply exhaust them by using the same difficult application twice in a row? We decided to build off what other OLPCorps teams have done, and introduce Scratch. Why not!? Scratch is the second most complex activity on the xo. But, one of the most useful. You can practice mathematics, program foreign language dialogues, and utilize it's characters for creative writing prompts. We decided to review the shapes each teacher learned in Turtle Art through Scratch language. To do this, James jumped into the circle of teachers and announced "Je suis le Sprite!" The teachers had to shout out Scratch commands to get him to walk in a square, a triangle, and a circle. We thought the teachers might feel the activity juvenile, but the next thing we knew several were raising their hands and shouting, while others jumped to the chalk board to explicate in writing what they were trying to shout. It was brilliant. All the teachers were able to review Turtle Art and advance to Scratch in one good ole pantomiming exercise.

To differentiate Scratch from Turtle Art we asked each teacher to create a French Dialogue. By using the "wait (_) seconds" and "say (_) for five seconds" commands, one can synchronize a conversation between two characters. Earlier in the week there were two notable teachers who were simply tired with the so. They struggled throughout class and by the end of three hours wanted nothing more to do with it. Yesterday and today we saw a significant change in attitude. One of these two teachers came in 30 minutes late yesterday, sat next to me, and said: "Stephanie, what is this? I want to make this. How can I?" Our PCV Devon had emphasized a need to "impress" them with what the so can do, and I think Turtle Art and Scratch finally have.

We start student teaching in the afternoons next week. There are 4 teachers who will be gone in August and are responsible for the first week of student initiation. Two of these teachers are the quickest and strongest learners. The other two are extremely nervous about teaching; but, we're forcing them to dive right in. We will pair up the two stronger teachers with the two more hesitant ones and see how it goes.

Until then...