LGfL’s Space Adventures – designed for everyone?

Posted on June 26, 2019 by thclc

In 2018 the London Grid for Learning published online a resource for primary schools created around a sci-fi story of a young woman undertaking a journey to the moon for a mining company. Set not far into the future, the story is told in a series of talking head videos as the mission gets underway, as the astronaut, Taz collects rock samples on the moon, and then as it goes alarmingly wrong on her way back to earth. It is an exciting, engaging story, that comes with a wide range of resources to help with differentiation in the classroom and to make it inclusive for all learners.

The videos themselves were shot using a professional actress, so the various emotional states the astronaut goes through are well-portrayed, helping children to understand how she responds at different points in the story, and her associated feelings. They are kept reasonably short and will work as engaging lesson starters.

Each video is sub-titled so learners with hearing impairments can enjoy the story, but this may also help those who are learning English as an additional language by linking words to text. And it makes it easier to follow a noisy environment.

They also come with transcripts, either to download for further study or re-enactment in the classroom, or for use with screen readers for visually impaired learners to follow what is going on. Similarly each episode is also written as a chapter of story, so it can be studied as a book. In order to make sure this is accessible to more pupils in the class the story is also available in an ‘easy read’ format, with shorter sentences and a less demanding language level, but still with the core elements of the story present.

Then there are the audiobooks, designed so pupils can follow each chapter as it is read, or listen to it as a standalone story. Useful for visually impaired learners, but also helpful for those who are dyslexic, new to English, or even those who simply like having stories read to them.

Beyond this the resource comes with ready made worksheets, including some that are simplified and created using Widgit symbols that help with decoding the text.

It’s not just the printed materials that are symbolised, the website itself has the Widgit Point system activated, so any word on the web-page that the viewer hovers the mouse pointer over will activate a pop-up glossary with the Widgit symbol for that word, to help with decoding. Other accessibility option include a choice of using the Dyslexie font that is said to make reading easier for those with dyslexia, and a switch to a high contrast colour scheme – helpful for some visually impaired users.

Of course, travelling into space also supports study in subjects other than literacy, so additional materials include lesson plans, starter presentations, and worksheets for Computing, Maths, and Science, too. Whilst these are not differentiated or adapted for SEND, there are some useful activities, particularly in computing. These latter activities are built around the trip to the moon, with learners creating animations in Scratch. To get them started there are explanatory videos, files of code to work from, and assets such as rockets and re-entry capsules so that they can focus on the code rather than creating the individual elements of the project.

There is a lot of material here, much of it deliberately created with learners with a broad range of challenges in mind. There content is interesting and engaging, and it can be used as a launchpad for many creative hours in the classroom. The only potential downside is that you need to be a London Grid for Learning (or Trustnet) subscribing school to get access. But that is over 95% of schools in the capital. To find out if you are one go to www.sainfo.lgfl.net

Making games in Scratch

Posted on July 7, 2015 by thclc

Once we had the hang of programming things to move, and added appropriate sound effects such as ‘aaghs!’ when a shark bit a fish, or of the bubbles in the tank, we moved on to control the fish in the tank rather than just have them swimming randomly.

We set the crab to work by telling it to point at the mouse then move five steps. This has the effect of making the fish chase the mouse cursor, so we could keep it away from the shark by moving the cursor around the screen.

Next we introduced the idea of controlling sprites (the name for the things in a game you can program) using the keyboard. To do this we created a new game using a racing car, although we could have used the fish, perhaps having the shark moved with arrow keys and the crab with the mouse then playing against each other to see how long the crab could survive.

We began by drawing a racing circuit then importing a car sprite.

This is Nishat’s very colourful race track.

Once we had programmed the arrow keys to control the direction of the car we could get it to move around the track.

Aziz introduced three different cars all steered by different sets of keys so that people could have a race.

We also learnt how to make the car go back to the start if it crashed. To do this we found the co-ordinates of the starting point then told the sprite that if it touched the colour of the outer edge it had to go back to that point.

It didn’t take long before we were all racing each other around the screens.

Diving into Scratch

Posted on June 18, 2015 by thclc

What a busy morning. A lot of hardwork, but a lot of fun, too, and plenty of challenges.

We began with looking at the steps of a line dance and how instead of talking through each movement they give a sequence of steps one name. So a ‘link’ is putting a foot to one side, crossing the other one behind it, then moving the first foot sideways again, before bringing up the second foot to meet it. A lot easier to say “Do a link,” than to run through that sequence of commands each time. And you can use it again and again in different dances. In fact every dance is a collection of these sets of steps. A bit like coding where you bring together sets of instructions rather than having to rewrite the code every time.

We put this into practice in http://studio.code.org where we used the activities based on the film Frozen. These started out fairly easy, then we had to join them together to make ever more complicated shapes, like snowflakes and linked circles.

Then we put into practice what we had learned from the simulated coding environment in code.org by coding for real in Scratch. Some people hadn’t used it before, but everyone got to grips with it very quickly.

After a quick tour of the coding screen the task was to create a fish tank, put a fish in it, then get it to swim backwards and forwards.

We had to use the ‘Forever’ command and get the fish to ‘bounce’ whenever it hit the sides, so it ended up swimming around the tank. At the end everyone was adding more fish and getting them to swim colourfully around together.

Dance till you drop

Posted on June 11, 2015 by thclc

We spent a lot of time this week dancing.

We watched videos of Dance Dance Revolution, a game involving a dance mat that most of the adults remembered, but not many of the students. You have to follow directions on screen to move on a floormat, scoring points if you tread on the right square.

We also watched a video of a robot and decided that Dance Dance Revolution was like programming a robot, so we created our own dance programs. In groups we created short routines using simple sets of directions and numbers, then we tried them out to La Vida Loca, before joining them all together into one long dance. Aziz acted as our choreographer helping everyone to follow the steps in each program.

Whilst the commands were the same in each dance – Fd, BK, Lt,Rt, Wait and Repeat – the number of steps or time to pause changed in each routine. These we called “Variables” because they change whilst the actions remain the same. We also introduced a command “Repeat until the music stops,” to make sure the dance lasted as long as the tune.

After that we used Purplemash and completed the Bubbles activity.

As the bubbles drifted up the screen we had to click on them to make them disappear with a ‘pop.’ Some people added more bubbles and made them do other things, either changing direction or making different sounds.

Everyone thought it was a good fun morning.

Drag till we drop coding

Posted on June 4, 2015 by thclc

Today we started using drag and drop to code. This way you don’t need to type in the instructions but select the ones you want then join them together to build up the instructions.

We began by using a floormat and giving each other instructions to move around it. We had typed commands that we then added in numbers of steps or turns to. This could prove challenging remembering which way to turn.

Then we used the Angry Birds game in studio.code.org .

Next we used 2Code in Purplemash. We had to give fish in an on-screen aquarium commands to make them move in the right direction.

We all got to the point where we could add our own fish then program them to move when they were clicked. You could add as many fish as you wanted to. Nishat wanted to add a lot of fish.

She must like clown fish!

Some of them moved automatically. Others had to be clicked on to start them moving. We found you could click one fish and make a different one move.

Sometimes we had to think very hard to work out what to do. But everyone worked hard.

More steps in programming.

Posted on May 21, 2015 by thclc

Robots are machines that we can tell what to do and that will do that thing again and again and again, whenever we want them to. Rather like washing machines or microwaves. These have programs that perform the same function whenever we set them to do a particular thing. We talked about examples of this in the world around us and thought about traffic lights.

The first challenge this morning was to work out the sequence that traffic lights followed. Students used coloured discs to act out what traffic lights do. We watched a very boring video of a set of traffic lights and realised that the timing of each light varies. We then wrote a program for a set of traffic lights.

Repeat continuously:-

Red on 20 seconds

Red and orange on 2 seconds.

Red and orange off.

Green on 14 seconds.

Green off.

Orange on 4 seconds

Orange off.

We tried following this sequence with a set of three coloured torches, red, orange and green. It was harder to do than it looks.

We then moved on to programming on screen. The program 2Go is part of Purplemash from 2Simple. It has different sets of tools in it that mean programming with it can become more and more challenging.

At first we used buttons to move in a particular direction. Then we added a set of boxes, a flow chart, to program in.

Then we added diagonals . The next challenge was to program a turtle to write a letter from our names using diagonals.

‘F’ for Fatima.

Fatima didn’t need to use diagonals for her letter.

To work out the programs we wrote letters on graph paper then worked out the directions and the steps.

‘N’ for Nowrin programmed in 2Go.

Nowrin needed one diagonal. She needed several attempts to get it to be the correct length.

Tasmima’s letter T

Tasmima’s letter ‘T’ has four steps in the progam.

How to program a ‘W’ in 2Go.

Wasima programmed her ‘W’ quite quickly. She was pleased with what she had done.

There were lots of challenges. Nishat needed to use the whole flowchart of 10 steps to create an ‘S.’ Jack did a ‘J’ that filled the screen, and James managed to write his whole name.

Everyone worked hard, but they all enjoyed it.

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