Having good developed education plan gives more confidence in teaching.
Things to keep in mind
- Avoid praise-and-rewards method. The goal is to develop intrinsic motivation to learn computer science. Using praise-and-reward method is using for manipulation and has very bad long-term consequences.
- Average attention for children in age 6-8 is about 18 minutes.
- Children have different skills, have different interests, and learn at different speed.
- Teacher must be aware of Curse of knowledge bias and explain each new thing in plain terms (Feynman technique).
The first lesson
Kids like to have hands-on activities, so the first lesson must contain as minimum lectures as possible. Draft structure:
- Part 1: Students connect the parts of computer. I explain what is computer, monitor, keyboard, mouse.
- Part 2: Students switch on the computer.
- Part 3. Students open Scratch. I explain briefly what is what.
- Part 4. Students paint a new sprite.
What next
There are some activities available online. Scratch webpage offers project ideas. Some Logic gates game helps to demonstate binary logic.
My very good friend Iván offered me to make some workshops on robotics. We could try accessories like Edison and Micro:bit. That will open a new horizon on what we can do on classes.
There are plenty of things to do.