Robotics are a great way to get your students into problem solving and coding. I love to use Spheros in the classroom, as they can do so much. So I thought I'd create Codebreak Bogey, a robot golf game that you use a robot to score points. Feel free to download, print and play.

Enjoy

Anthony Breese

Is there such a thing as an average student? When we get a new class at the beginning of the year, we begin to test them and work out where we set our teaching for the year. Although we strive to make sure that each individual is taught to their individual needs, we still target the middle. Some of this has to do with the size of our classrooms. But is this an effective way of educating when research is showing that there is no average brain?

Michael Miller, a neuroscientist from UC Santa Barbara conducted a study of verbal memory. While subjects participated in this activity, Miller scanned their brain with a FMRI brain scanner. Miller took the image of what was supposed to be the average brain before comparing them to the brains he had scanned. What he found is that nobody matched to so called "average" brain.

Picture from: https://publicism.info/business/average/2.html

So, how does that help us in creating a programme in our classrooms? What it shows is that averaging out our classrooms does not work, grouping students by age does not work, creating expectations around age does not work, assessing students to these averages does not work and we can't really rely on averages.

What can we do to make our education system suit?

Jackie Gerstein, Ed.D. August 18, 2018blog article 'Why do we group students by manufacture date?', suggests we should be grouping by interests rather than age.

"I find this to be more natural and mimics real world learning as individuals often seek out others in their out-of-school lives who have similar interests. Interest-driven learning is much more motivating and engaging. Community develops naturally due to shared interests. "

I know what you're thinking, this would cause so many issues like…

How do we take the students on camp?

Would we still teach students to at to their level?

Would students still make friends with others their age?

How can I cover all the different levels of the curriculum?

Looking at the list of benefits, definitely outweigh some of the small negatives. In my job as a PLD facilitator, I work with people of all ages, sex, ability and personality. The age groups range from 5 year olds to 60 year olds with all sorts of capabilities, yet students and teachers are still learning.

Some of the great benefits include…

Multi-age-group socialisation

Better sense of community

Increased student agency as students have to work more for themselves

Variety of perspectives

Older students looking after the younger students

Decrease in behaviour problems

Increase in students being able to learn through their own interests

I really see this when I walk into a rural school, where a sense of community is far more apparent with older helping younger and students having to work for themselves as the teacher has many age groups to work with.

This would obviously take some massive change in thinking, however parts of this could definitely be entwined into how we teach or how a school operates. Even start by finding more opportunities to cross ages, such as…

Plan with another teacher from a different age. The class could design a game using scratch with the younger class, working together for the younger age group. The older student creates the game by following instructions from codeclubprojects.com, with the younger being the adviser. Also, the younger students gets the opportunity to learn how to code a game in scratch. The game could help support the younger child with their addition facts in maths for example.

No longer will the classroom be average!

"If I'm spending time on something, I may as well do good as opposed to average." Fred DeLuca.

"Why do we group students by manufacture date? | User Generated ...." 18 Aug. 2018, https://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/2018/08/18/why-do-we-group-students-by-manufacturer-date/. Accessed 14 Jan. 2019.

"Fred DeLuca Quotes - BrainyQuote." 14 Sep. 2015, https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/fred_deluca. Accessed 14 Jan. 2019.

Now that my class is working more independently…well most of them, I wanted to be more flexible with my workshops. I look at what the children need to achieve by looking at their assessment rubric or matrix and jot down their next steps. From the information gathered, I set up a workshop on using conjunctions, another using commas, and another on extending ideas. Even though the children are working on an inquiry, they still need to use these concepts in their inquiry writing and I will be looking for them specifically when marking. I have the children write or type their next steps at the top of their work so I know what they are working on. This is to help with the marking process and remind the children to focus on this intention when completing the task.

When the children have completed their writing, they link their work to the learning intention on their rubric or matrix. This can be used as evidence for their learning. If their evidence is not in digital form, then you can always use a camera to digitise it. Here's a great way to scan or video the work they have completed.

You can video or photograph straight from your Google Drive on an iPad.

Here's how it is done.