Mr Hammerlund

I have always enjoyed doing after-school clubs. I think it is a great way for students to explore their passions and it gives the teacher and student a different way of relating to each other. I am always thinking of different clubs to facilitate and I usually do this by surveying the students to see what they are interested in. Earlier this year I was looking to code a game for a phone. Looking online I came across GDevelop5. It is a game development program. After using it for a while and seeing that there are many tutorials available, I thought it would be a good thing to introduce to the students.  So, I used that as the backdrop to the club. I called it "Coding Games on a MacBook" so that only Grade 5 and 6 students would join. (We are 1:1 starting in G5).  The Plan The plan was for them to work on the space shooter game. I chose this one because it had a tutorial and I had some experience with it. Students would follow a tutorial and build their game. I would be on hand...

What is an Essential Agreement? When you went to school, were rules posted on the wall for all to see? I don’t remember rules being posted in my classroom when I was in school, but since I became a teacher, we teachers have been asked to post them in our classrooms each year.  If your child is attending an IB (International Baccalaureate) school, they probably have something called an Essential Agreement hanging in their classroom. An Essential Agreement is a common understanding or “set of rules” among the members of a community about what everyone’s common values are. We try not to call them rules because rules are made by someone in authority and imposed on someone else. An essential agreement can look differently depending on the school, classroom, and teacher. Usually you will find a list of rules written in positive language about how the students want the classroom to look and feel. In most cases, students will sign the agreement to show that they have had a chance to add th...