How we teach teachers to teach programming

The computing education blog poses a long list of research questions in computing education. I was going to quote my favourite, but the whole post is worth reading…

T.E.A.C.H

To complement LEARN we now have T.E.A.C.H.

Targeted questioning

Engage and Extend

Assess and Adapt

Challenge All

High Aspirations

LEARN

On the classroom wall. L.E.A.R.N.

Listen when the teacher or others are talking.

Enter the room Equipped to learn.

Aim to do the best you can.

Respect others

No calling out.

Fizz Buzz

@danielstucke asked for little programming tasks around conditionals and loops.

I suggested the Fizz Buzz challenge.

is a group word game frequently encountered as a drinking game. Players take turns to count incrementally, replacing any number divisible by three with the word “fizz”, and any number divisible by five with the word “buzz”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bizz_buzz

Before reading on, try it. Go on, write some code that plays Fizz Buzz.

Excellent Windows

I have a poster on the classroom wall. It has a quote attributed to Steve Jobs:

Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.

Four things from Ofsted

A summary of what ofsted say they want from Scenes From The Battleground.

1. Planning to provide a framework for lessons.
2. Reflective teachers who acknowledge that teaching is a learning process.
3. Perceptive people that can adapt to optimise a learning episode (and change their carefully made plans when needed).
4. Measuring your success on whether measurement shows students making (rapid) progress.
5. Resilience.

A good read. (This week I realise that I’m struggling with #5).

OECD on supporting new teachers

The OECD EducationToday has a post on supporting new teachers. They looked at the relatively high attrition rate for new teachers (around 10% leave the profession within the first three years of teaching) and found the new teachers confidence in their own abilities was likely to be a major contributing factor.

The full Teaching in Focus brief is available from OECD as is the survey data on which the findings were based.