Alyson's First Class

October 8, 2009
Alyson’s class started at 12noon at Louisville Middle School. She was teaching one class for the project this semester. This was the 4th day of instruction for this class. In her class, the desks were set up in groups of four or five facing each other. When I arrived, the class had just started. Alyson was bending over a student giving instruction, while many other students had their hands up. Her class consisted of approximately 25 to 30 students. She introduced me and told the students that I could help them. She also had a student named “Josh” (who had taken Fred’s class this Summer) helping the students. The main problem Josh had, was that he kept doing the lesson for the students, rather than just instructing them in what they needed to do, and then letting them do it!

I spent the entire class helping individual students. All the students were enthusiastic, but still needed specific instructions, continually, probably due to the lack of visual presentation for them to follow. When one of the students in a group of desks learned a lesson, they would help the others. Unfortunately, they learned and accomplished what they had learned so quickly, that Alyson, Josh and I were still unable to help everyone in a timely manner. When the class was over, I stayed to talk more with Alyson. I talked to her about using the smart screen to have the lessons portrayed in a visual manner. She wanted to make sure that her students were on target as far as their progress on the games. Her students had finished their agents, they were working on making their frog move, and some were starting the winning sequence. I told her that as far as I could see, they were doing fine. We talked about the future for teaching Agentsheets. She was working on trying to find a way to teach it in her other class … she teaches her classes on an alternating yearly schedule. Before I left, she gave me a brochure to a School Board conference at the end of the month (October). I told her I would get back to her about whether we could go or not. (When I told Alex about the conference, evidently we were already attending).