Teaching Conditionals!

This past Tuesday, September 6th, I had the opportunity to teach a college class what a conditional was. Overall, it was a great experience that taught me a lot about computer science in the classroom. My group started off our lesson with a game called Kahoot. Without telling any of the students why exactly we were playing the game we were able to demonstrate what a conditional was without giving it a name. Through Kahoot we had the students log on to the app and answer the questions. This was a great way to get everyone involved and engaged in the topic. We told the students that if everyone got the last question right then we could get out of class early. This is how we introduced the idea of a conditional. If we do this then this will happen (getting out of class early) but if we don't something else will happen (we will stay in class). From here we moved to more examples to clarify the definition of a conditional. We also played two different games. The first game was a simple card game with only two conditionals so the students could get the hang of it. The second game was played with m&ms and had five conditionals making the game more challenging. While the students were playing these games in their groups we had an instructor assigned to each group to make sure they understood the purpose of the games. When the games ended we came together as a group and discussed the overall meaning of a conditional. We asked the students to provide examples and from their answers it really seemed that they understood the concept of the conditional.

Through this experience I learned that teaching computer science can be difficult and that it is crucial that you have your students attention throughout the entire lesson. For young students it is easy for them to loose interest and get confused. Throughout our presentation we kept our students engaged by presenting material in different ways that required them to be involved and listening. My partners and I were sure to have all students on the same page and answer all questions to the best of our ability. The only thing that we did not take into account when planning this lesson is how we would teach it on our own without our partners. With our own respective classrooms in the future we will have 18-25 kids, how will be able to make sure that every group understands the concepts of the game? What I think we can do in the future is play a couple of rounds with the entire class in order to get the hang of it and then split them off into their own groups and like we did for our presentation, walk around and answer any questions that the students may have. Having the opportunity to conduct a class on conditionals was a great experience that gave me a preview into what and how I want to conduct my future classroom.