• 12-15
• Boniface

This lesson was the first in a trying to get the class to produce a descriptive algorithm that would later be developed into a creative algorithm.

The class was divided into groups of three and each group was given the same image to work with. This is the image I selected

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/mosaics_gallery_04.shtml This part of the lesson went well and the students were engaged and keen.

Each group had to list as many ways to describe it as possible, I gave them about 10 minutes to complete this task. They then all had to stand up and one group at a time to read out one description, until all the descriptions were used up. Once the groups had no more descriptions left they had to sit down. The last group left standing was the winner. This is wher things started to go horribly wrong...

This is a class that find group work challenging, and are not good at being respectful towards each other when it is not their turn. So instead of using 10 minutes on this second part we used almost 30 minutes. They found it hard to sit and listen, they were accusing each other of cheating, sitting when they were meant to stand and so on. In retrospect this was probably not the best class to work with for this project.

At the end of the lesson we ended up with a list of 54 descriptions, and had a short talk about which ones could be grouped together and why. Already at this point I began to feel unsure as to which of the descriptions were parameters and which were values.