Limbic~Region has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:
Tomorrow I will be doing a 30 minute presentation to second grade classrooms by request as a follow-up to career day. One of the key components requested was to involve the students and have them build something hands on. At the last minute, I was told that the computer lab was no longer available as I was going to have them build a small program in Scratch.
I am still going to use the classroom computer with overhead projector for most of the presentation to include showing off Scratch. I am struggling with what to do with the hands on portion (approximately 10 minutes).
One idea I have is for them perform a bubble sort based on their heights. I am concerned about time as well as individuals moving when it is not their turn to swap.
Another idea I had would be for them to do something like a Caesar Cipher where they reveal a secret message by following a simple algorithm (pen and paper).
My OT question to you is: If you had around 10 minutes to give second grade students a hint at computer programming without them having access to a computer, what would you do?
Update: It was a smashing success. I had 30 minutes per class with 5 classes total. The format was as follows:
- Short presentation
- Why we are here (S.T.E.A.M School = Science, Technology, Engineering Arts and Mathematics)
- What I will be talking about = Computer/Software Engineering
- What makes a good engineer (math, problem solving, creative thinking, curiosity, etc)
- Short Scratch demonstration where I built a program live in front of them (rocket ship that chases the mouse around the screen with an outerspace background and plays a "ray-gun" sound when it catches it
- Sandwich demonstration (just jelly since I was concerned about potential allergies).
- Live bubble sort demonstration
- Question and Answers
- Caesar Cipher and Binary Search homework
Cheers - L~R