I Don't Want to Play Dodgeball, I Want to Keep Playing with the Bead Tool!

It has been a month since we started the after school program at the Arc Community Charter School and now the students are solely using the computers on their own. After the complaints last week that they did not have enough time on the computers we decided to spend the entire hour on the computers. The students ate their pizza as we hurried to set up the computers then we had the students start using the software. The students were simply told to pick a design on the right to recreate. The students still struggled with plotting points and it was difficult to not just tell them how to do it. I tried to have the students break the design into simple shapes and what points make up those shapes. Once they figured out what points made those shapes I would have them plot one point and look at the points around it. For instance, they put one point down then saw that six of the same color are stacked on top of it I would have them keep increasing the Y number and hit enter until it looked like the reference picture. This method worked for most students but of course there are always students that just want to do their own thing. One student wanted to make a star out of lines and I taught him about about how lines are made out of two points and how to find the start and end points. It was a struggle at first but by the end he was making symmetrical lines on his own and completed his own design. It was a very busy hour bouncing around helping students but the best part came when we lost track of time and realized it was time to cleanup. All of the students complained and wanted to stay there instead of playing dodge ball at the Troy Boys and Girls Club. This situation shows that these simple tools is just as engaging as a video or computer game yet the students are learning without even realizing it!