From: led11@ccc.amdahl.com (Lynn Robinson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
Subject: Beginning Logo lesson plans/project ideas?
Date: 8 Sep 92 01:39:22 GMT
Reply-To: led11@juts.ccc.amdahl.com ()
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA


  Hi, I have just started to volunteer in the computer lab in an inner-city 
elementary school, and my self-assigned task is to compile some good lesson 
plans using Logo for 5th and 6th graders.  If anyone out there has created
or used any lessons plans that worked really well for beginners (kids 
with < 1 year of Logo), has these plans on-line, and would like to
share them, I would greatly appreciate it. 

Some background to explain what types of "plans" I need and why:

  I am fairly new to Logo and have bought and borrowed a few books on 
the subject which I have been skimming for interesting ideas for beginners. 
Thus far, however, I haven't been that successful in finding good ones 
(although I've recently acquired Dan Watt's book and another book called 
'Nudges' which looks a little better than some of the other books I've
seen).  Some of the 6th graders seem to have been "taught" Logo (in a 
very un-Piagetian manner) for almost a year, although they only used it for
at most 45 minutes per week.  I was not very impressed with the book they 
had been using, since it contained a series of worksheets that told the
children pretty much exactly what to type, after which the children
were told to draw what appeared on the screen.  It seemed that many
of the kids would follow these lessons in a fairly mindless way, and
weren't encouraged to think about what they were doing or to 
be creative.  I'm not sure if it's because of the type of worksheets
they had been using, because of their prior school experiences, or because 
these children are mostly from disadvantaged homes, but it seems to me 
that the kids who have been using Logo for a year haven't really progressed 
very far in their understanding.  For instance, I'm told that they "learned" 
the turtle commands, procedures, and variables, but I find that at least 
3/4 of the experienced class cannot perform tasks specified simply as 
"Create a procedure to draw a square", "Draw a triangle", or "Edit your 
procedure and fix the bug" unless they are given very explicit instructions.

  What I'm looking for are projects that give the students minimal
(but sufficient) instructions, and encourage the students to think.
I probably should not even use the term "lesson plan" since I really
mean a project which encourages the child to experiment and discover.
In the month since I've started, we've done a few exercises that 
worked OK: traversing various mazes (using transparencies), drawing capital 
letters, creating procedures to do the mazes or draw letters (for the more 
advanced), standing up and playing turtle (for beginners), and doing some 
predictions of programs given (which only worked if we had the kids predict 
before going to the lab).   We have quite a range of levels of understanding
within a particular class, so I'd like to compile a whole series
of plans that would progress from beginning to advanced, and allow
students to work at their own pace.  These lessons wouldn't be
graded, but we would try to check for understanding before letting
the student progress to a new concept, which implies we may need several
projects at each level.  

  By the way, we are stuck for the forseeable future with old Apple IIe's 
and the original Apple Logo, and don't have much money to buy new machines, 
software, or to buy books for each student.  This means advanced animation,
projects with Macs, and expensive programs such as Object Logo could
not be made available to entire classes.  Many of these children don't 
have much self-confidence in their ability to figure things out by themselves
and they get frustrated easily, so I can't give them completely unguided
and open project suggestions as of yet.   Also, the 6th graders seem 
a bit bored by projects that involve drawing polygons and other
geometric figures, probably because they typed in so many programs that 
drew polygons the previous year.  I have several books that have good
projects for intermediate/advanced students but they all seem to move a little
too fast for these kids (who are hunt and peck typists) - so it is beginning
and early intermediate lessons I need the most.  A lesson idea that gives the
students a lot of practice in editing but is not too boring would be
great.

  If you can help me find some new fun projects for these kids, 
I'll let you know how it works out when they try them.

Thanks in advanced,
  Lynn Robinson
  lynn@ras.amdahl.com 
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo