{"id":35,"date":"2012-02-12T14:21:24","date_gmt":"2012-02-12T14:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mrreddy.com\/blog\/?p=35"},"modified":"2024-10-12T14:25:10","modified_gmt":"2024-10-12T14:25:10","slug":"getting-pupils-into-logo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mrreddy.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/getting-pupils-into-logo\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting pupils into LOGO"},"content":{"rendered":"

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One of my memories of having fun learning maths was being shown how to control a ‘turtle’ so that it traced a path of my choosing across the computer screen. Maybe because I got to be the boss of something or because the learning curve was short and shallow, time vanished in those lessons.<\/p>\n

When I became a maths teacher, the first thing I looked for on the curriculum was LOGO, the turtle-control language, and was disappointed to not find it. That puzzled me \u2013 why would something of such great learning value not be there for children to learn? Angle facts, BIDMAS and algebra become three friends in a playground, with logic and language the climbing frame and rope bridges to play on. Not only was it not being taught, my colleagues looked at me strangely for raving on about it.<\/p>\n

So when it was my turn to write a curriculum this year, I jumped at the chance to include LOGO and place it at the party end of the geometry half-term. In fact, we\u2019ve just finished it and it was particularly timely given all the recent calls for programming in schools (see BBC News<\/a> and Wolfram’s ‘Math Does Not Equal Calculating<\/a>‘).<\/p>\n

And I enjoyed myself all over again!<\/p>\n

Pupil Competition<\/strong><\/p>\n

We decided to run it as a Key Stage 3 competition with a big launch in assembly. The brief was to use LOGO to create a piece of artistic and mathematical merit and the prize was a voice-activated robot!<\/p>\n

The same four lessons were given to all three yeargroups (all resources below) and differentiation was given in terms of the speed with which pupils were exposed to more sophisticated techniques for programming LOGO. The scale of complexity looked something like this:<\/p>\n