Couldn’t agree more!
Wendy Bretton
From: Phil Smith III
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2009 12:02 PM
To: 'W bretton'; [log in to unmask]
Subject: RE: [VADCFLL-L] Check out this site
Gotta
add: this sounds great but DON’T ignore the Research component! It’s as
important as the programming. So are Teamwork/Team Spirit, which also make it
more fun.
--
Phil Smith III
Virginia State Judge Advisor, 2007, 2008
Judge Advisor, Northern Virginia Regional tournaments, 2006
Division 1 Judge Advisor, Virginia State tournament, 2006
Coach, The Capital Girls, Oak Hill (retired)
Team 1900 (2002)
Team 2497 (2003)
Team 2355 (2004)
Team 1945 (2005)
From: First Lego League
in Virginia and DC [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of W
bretton
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2009 11:25 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [VADCFLL-L] Check out this site
Scratch is great, especially if you have an elementary school
team – 4th & 5th graders. It is written for
that age group. Even my daughter, who is six loved doing the Scratch
programming cards.
Our elementary school is starting an FLL team for the first
time. Because we have more applicants than team spots, we will also
have a club for all who applied, which will meet more leisurely after
tournaments are over. However, to pick the children for the team, I ran a
summer fun programming challenge to teach the kids the concept of programming. The
challenge took place all via email over the summer and we used Scratch.
Weekly assignments I sent out stepped them through the Fish project
at redware.com - http://www.redware.com/scratch/fish.html.
I tested them on my 9 year old son first before I emailed them out.
Then, I gave them a few bonus projects along the way. They seem to
have a lot of fun. Many of them seemed “Wow’d” that they could write
something like that all by themselves. All done through
email. I get to meet most of them on Wednesday at our first FLL
meeting. It is amazing what kids can do!