If you plan to teach your course synchronously, in a whole group classroom setting, make sure you're familiar with Kira tools and engagement strategies to keep everyone on the same page.
Whole Group Instruction with Kira
Just because you're using a platform-based curriculum does not mean that you cannot still teach your students in a whole-class setting. Generally, a whole-class, synchronous setting follows a more traditional classroom model where teachers lead most lessons and students remain on-pace with each other. In a Kira classroom, this often means that the majority of videos are watched as a group and the teacher may utilize content locking to keep students on the same class pace.
Whole Class Example Instruction
Let's take a look at a sample lesson from our high school course. Below is a table of activity steps in the lesson, broken down into different "chunks" based on the teacher adjusting the content locking feature and leading the class through the activities.
Below, an image of these steps with orange lines and locks representing where the content lock has been set at various points in the lesson.
Part 1: Lesson Introduction
At the start of class, the teacher has set the content lock for all students to after step 2 in the current lesson.
When students enter, they will first complete an unplugged Do Now/Warm Up activity without their computers. While the activity is completed silently, students will be asked to share in the hopes of having a brief, whole class discussion that launches into content.
As the class moves into Steps 1 and 2, they will login to computer but leave their computer clam shelled (or pac man'ed, depending on your preference to describe a < 45 degree angle). The teacher will play videos on the main screen for the class to watch together, pausing at key moments to ask check-for-understanding style questions, highlight vocabulary, or emphasize points.
Students will be asked to open their computers at the end of videos to complete the platform activity. Because they are working as a class, the teacher can choose to integrate engagement strategies as part of the question answering process. For example, the teacher might ask her students to complete a think-write-share before submitting the answer to a written response, or a think-code-share that functions as a student-led code along before hitting submit on newly written code.
While students complete submission of their activity in step 2, the teacher will move the content lock to the 2 position.
Part 2: Group Close and Partner Work
The class will watch the video for step 3 together before launching into partner work to complete the code. They will continue working with a partner for steps 3 - 5, reading the main takeaways and watching videos with their partner when necessary to review content. As students work, the teacher will circulate to make sure folks are getting started, ensure equal participation, and triage any emergency debugging efforts.
Note that partner work can come in two flavors:
- Traditional Pair Programming
- Student A drives (touches the computer) while Student B navigates (gives verbal instructions).
- You can assign these roles randomly, but it can be really powerful to ask the student who feels more confident to navigate first and aim for purposeful, heterogeneous pairings in your classroom.
- After getting an answer, students swap roles.
- This can either be to work on the next problem, or as a say back to make sure the initial solution in their account.
- Student A drives (touches the computer) while Student B navigates (gives verbal instructions).
- Partner Brain Share
- Ask students to work together to solve on their individual screens; they must check that they each have an answer they agree on, that runs in the same way, before submitting. Ask students to high five once this step as done as an auditory cue work is happening.
As a best practice, we recommend having an opening and closing routine to begin partner work. For example, "Turn to your left - this is your new partner. Tell them you like their shirt and then begin working." or "Great job working with your partners - tell them their code is amazing before coming back to the group."
Part 3: Group Discussion
The teacher has now moved the content lock to after Step 6. Students will clamshell their computers and watch the video as a group, once again sharing thoughts and having a group discussion before submitting their written response answers. For this lesson, the teacher has chosen to make this group work because of the rich conversation that can come from ethical computing discussions.
Part 4: Independent Work
Students have now had chances to learn as a group and with partners, and it's time to test them on their own. They will complete steps 7-9 independently, prior to the wrap-up. Work they do not finish will become homework.
As the students work, the teacher circulates. The teacher can talk to students based on need or issue, but may wish to prioritize a conferencing schedule or calendar to ensure all students receive a touch point during the week.
Part 5: Wrap-Up
The class comes back together without their computers for a wrap-up and review focused on lesson content.
A Note for Fast Workers
Even with a dynamically chunked lesson that relies on content locking, you may have students who finish ahead of the class and get bored not being able to move on. Normalizing sponge activities - or supplementary activities students complete to soak up extra time when they finish - can help with classroom engagement and management.
- Typing skills - your school or district may have a preferred platform for this, but many free ones exist.
- Extra Coding Practice - utilize our Standalone Code Editor and give students extra challenges!
- You can utilize our Kira Content Design Wizard to help with this.
- Consider making a batch of activities for an entire Unit; you can label them as mild, medium, spicy, or by the skills they should know to attempt them.
- Weekly Error Assessment - ask students to submit their favorite error (flawed code) or write a coding challenge. At the end of the week, work 1-2 of these into an end of week error assessment task.