Wednesday afternoons are when I teach a really irritating group of year 7 students. They seem unable to sit quietly, can’t listen to instructions and will do anything to distract the people around them. Following last week’s threat, they did today’s lesson on paper.

… the whole lesson … They’re learning about computer control; so flowcharts, statements, structure and order. We have a program called Flowol which lets them make simple programs using basic flowchart shapes, then link the programs to animated pictures. It’s programming, but at a level so simple the kids don’t realise they’re doing anything important with the computer.

The lesson was based around a set of traffic lights. All they had to do was plan out how to make the lights change in the correct sequence. And with the assistance of another teacher dragging the disruptive ones outside for a stern word, and a surprise visit from their head of year, the lesson went well.

Next week we’ll go back on the computers and make a big wheel work. I’ve done it with my year 9 class and I could see some of them getting that little buzz from making something work. I set them challenges - “make the wheel stop when the gate opens” “ok, now make the lights flash” and they’d go off and do it.

Welcome to my world kiddies It’s just a shame they only do it once each year and the stuff we do is so limited. I wonder if I could do Logo with them at some point. I saw a really good Logo lesson being taught at my first training school.