A reflection after two meetings
After meeting twice I wanted to pause, reflect and share on what I have learned so far.
Have an agenda ready to go. Decide what you want to get through and what your quicker learners should do when they finish earlier.
Have a set of basic norms for students to follow until the club can determine their own norms.
Having snacks and drinks during the first 15 minutes gives the students time to settle down and focus on the upcoming meeting.
Realize, that just like in your classroom. Some of these kids are going to take to code like a fish to water. While others will take a little longer to progress through the lessons. Be patient and be sure to remind students of all the resources that they can use to find a solution.
You may want to take a couple of these kids who are proficient at coding and assign them a job as a student help desk. This will give the other students a place to go to ask for help and allow the proficient students to practice leadership skills.
Next, you will want to have a couple of student leaders to perform tasks, such as passing out of snacks and drinks, passing out and collecting iPads running certain parts of the meetings and other such tasks. as you progress through the year, and the students become more comfortable in the format of the meetings and encoding, you can release more responsibilities to these students.
If you are using iPads from a shared cart, make sure the other teachers understand that the iPads need to be plugged in when they are done with them so the club members will have enough power to get through a coding session. there is nothing worse than having kids not being able to code because of power issues.
Staying on the issues of iPads from a shared cart. Make sure you somehow document which iPad each student has so they can get the same iPad each meeting and they can pick up in Swift Playgrounds where they left off.
Having an Apple TV set up in the area, makes it much easier to play videos, and share code.
You can find Apple produced videos about coding topics in swift Playgrounds on YouTube. It is a great way to start a new topic.
I would suggest completing the puzzles yourself prior to the club meetings, even if you are proficient in coding, so you understand what the goal of the puzzle is when students ask.
Give yourself around 5 to 10 minutes before the end of each club meeting for students to have time to reflect about what they learned today. You could also use this time for a group code review. This is especially useful if you .have an Apple TV to airplay the students screen to so they can explain and show their code.
Ordering the T-shirts for the club can take longer than what you think it would.