Hopscotch in the Classroom

 

On Monday, October 13th the 5th year STEM students traveled to Liberty Drive Elementary School, to once again meet with the Stem Club teachers from Thomasville City. This week we worked on training the teachers on how to use Hopscotch Programming. It was a brand new tool for them, so we had to start from the very beginning.

I had two other seniors in my team who were training some the 3rd-5th grade teachers. However, we only had one Liberty Drive teacher at our table, so it made for a very interesting experience. We started off by letting our teacher play with the pre-made games that are built into Hopscotch. These games show you the many different ways one can use Hopscotch. At the same time, they serve as a tutorial model, showing the user how to use the very basic programming features that are included on the app. Afterwards, we gave our teacher some challenges to design on Hopscotch and then we started talking about how she could use Hopscotch in her classroom.

One of the things I learned from this experience is that you never know what you are going to get when you go to a professional development session. Megan, Gabi, and I were prepared to be teaching several teachers at once, yet we only had one. The fact that we only had one teacher made the experience very unique in a variety of ways.

First off, I believe that the teacher felt a little uncomfortable at the beginning because she had three women sitting around prepared to teach her. This made the situation a little awkward because there wasn't enough for us, as teachers, to be doing. As a result, we were all sort of "watching her" or trying to offer advice. When she was trying to work with the program, she kept joking that she was nervous because everyone was watching her. While she said it as a joke, I'm sure she really was a little uncomfortable.

The other thing that I learned from only having one student, is that the lesson plan goes by much quicker. We didn't have as many things planned out because we assumed it would take a lot more time to go through our lesson. This is because we thought that teachers might be taking turns and sharing iPads. Also when you only have one student, you can adjust the curriculum directly to that student's needs.

However, there were a few good things that came out of only having one student. Our teacher was able to get a lot of hands-on help because every HPU teacher was available to work directly with her. We each knew something a little bit different about the program, so we could all share our experiences and our advice with her. This meant that she received a well rounded training on Hopscotch.

We were also able to focus directly on the teacher's needs and how she could use this program within her classroom. We talked about shapes and angles but the unfortunate thing is that she and her students do not have access to much technology, including iPads. This means that she really isn't able to implement this kind of technology within her classroom. However, our teacher mentioned that she believes her kids would like working with this app, so in the future she might have the opportunity to use it.

Overall, I think that this week went over well since the HPU students in my group and I, knew exactly what was going to be happening at Liberty Drive. We were more prepared for how our meetings with the Stem Club teachers were going to go, since we had done it once before. I also felt a lot more comfortable since the room wasn't as loud because that tends to stress me out. I think that the teachers and I have both learned more about how to work with Hopscotch Programming and how to use it in the classroom. I am excited to come back after fall break and continue working with the teachers at Liberty Drive Elementary.