10 Sugar Lessons
The following lessons are much less structured than the previous math lessons. They allow students to explore and use other activities on the XO laptop that aren't Etoys. Look at this guideline below for ideas on how to structure each day, but feel free to adjust it to your particular needs. The most important thing is to keep students exploring new programs and skills on their own. Please note Lesson 10, which requires access to the internet. If internet is not available, use this day to explore another activity that you would like to try, or even have students explore different activities and then teach each other what they have learned. This lesson can be the first lesson you do, the last lesson, or somewhere in the middle. Be sure to communicate with your other mentors well before class so that you know how you are going to teach each day's lesson and what information you are trying to get across to the students.
Remember: If you can find internet access before class, you can always download more activities at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities. There are math and science games and other programs that might be beneficial to your lesson!
Good questions to ask yourself in preparation for each class:
· What are we trying to teach today?
· What skills do we want students to develop, using this lesson?
· Have I tried this lesson myself? Do I know how to use the programs I am teaching?
· Do we have a clear strategy organized in our group about how we will teach class today?
· What will we do if class doesn't work the way we wanted?
1. Project description: Interviews: Pair students together and have them interview each other. They can ask questions like how many family members their partner has, what they like most about school, what their favorite thing to do outside of school is, etc. Have students type up the answers to these questions using the Write program and take a picture of their partner (using the Record program) to insert with the text as well.
Activities used: Write, Record
What students learn: Interviewing and summarizing skills, typing, journalism
Homework: Oral History: Go home and interview an adult (parent, neighbor) using skills learned in class. Ask the adult about their life, what they remember about their youth and their town/neighborhood during their youth, etc. Type your adult's oral history on the XO and include a picture.
2. Project description: Interviews/Newspaper articles: Have students share their interviews in class with each other. Then have the students pick a topic of interest and write about it. They will be able to work on this project tomorrow as well. They can all write about the same subject or different subjects. They can interview people around town, each other, etc. Students are also welcome to conduct research online and use pictures from the internet. Students will also have tomorrow to work on this project.
Activities used: Write, Record
What students learn: Interviewing and summarizing skills, typing, journalism, research [internet] skills
Homework: Working on their articles.
3. Project description: Newspaper Articles work day
Homework: Finish newspaper articles to present them tomorrow.
4. Project description: Present newspaper articles to class, drawing: Break students into small groups to present students' newspaper articles and talk about the issues addressed in each article. What was each student trying to communicate and why is that subject important?
Discuss how painting is like creating a visual story. Look at any piece of art and talk about the many things that art can say without using words. What techniques does an artist use to communicate a message? What message do they communicate? You can use a physical piece of art, or find a piece of art on the internet and download it to everyone's XO.
Have each student pick a different location and draw it using the Paint program. Experiment with the Colors program if you like. It needs to be downloaded onto the XOs or onto a USB drive and then put on the XOs manually. (http://colors.collectingsmiles.com/ http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Colors!)
Activities used: Write (minimal), Browser, Paint
What students learn: Basic questioning and inquiry, discussion and debate, research skills (if Internet is used), two-dimensional art and design
5. Project Description: Tam Tam and Music Painter: Explore the many possibilities of music creation using the Tam Tam activity. Play with the music painter (this needs to be downloaded to the laptops- you can use a USB to put it on each XO). See what interesting music students can make.
Activities Used: Tam Tam, Music Painter
What students learn: Basic music creation
Homework: Break into groups of four and pick a song to use tomorrow in a student-created music video. Have one student record the song onto their XO laptop (they can sing the song, record from a radio, use the Tam Tam song they created, etc.)
6. Project Description: Music Videos: Students create music videos in groups of four by playing music and dancing to it or acting out a scene, then simultaneously recording this using the Record program on their XO laptops. Make sure that it is a collaborative process with each student taking a role in the video's creation.
Activities Used: Record, potentially Tam Tam
What students learn: Performing arts/theater/dance, basic video production, collaboration and teamwork
7. Project Description: Ebooks: Break into groups and read ebooks together. Talk about the stories and compare them to your Etoys storybooks. Are they different? Similar? What do they talk about? Who are the characters? What is the plot or storyline? The Ebooks are located on the USB drives, under EMPOTAN: Mentor Materials\Ebooks. Be sure to put them on all of the students' computers.
Activities Used: Ebooks
What students learn: How to use ebooks, basic reading skills, discussion and reading comprehension.
8. Project Description: Distance: Practice measuring various things using the Distance program. Break into pairs and set up two computers in various distances. Start up the "distance" program and use the computers to measure the length of a table, or a distance from one thing to another.
Activities Used: Distance
What students learn: Basic mathematical modeling and calculation skills
9. Project Description: Calculate: Create various math problems and have students solve them using the Calculate program on their XOs.
Activities Used: Calculate
What students learn: Basic arithmetic, problem solving.
10. Extra class (if possible): Internet
If Internet is available, practice using Google and other websites to conduct research. Ask various questions and see how quickly students can find the answers on the Internet. They can do it in Creole, French or any other language. Good example questions to ask:
· When was the internet invented?
· Why does rain fall from the sky?
· Who invented the telephone? Where was this person from?
· How do you say "bonjou" in Portuguese?
· How do giraffes sleep?
If Internet is not available, think of your own class lesson using an activity in Sugar, or spend more time working on one of the activities already learned. The important thing is to keep students exploring and using Sugar activities. A good idea might be to have the students break into groups, explore the other available activities and then have each group teach a different activity to the rest of the class. You can do this activity before the other activities or as a final lesson.
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