Today I Didn’t Teach: Thoughts on Independence

Today, I didn’t teach anything. I let my students teach themselves, and it was wonderful.

Although the Hour of Code was in December, we didn’t work on it then, because there were many other projects that had to get done. Now that the school year is winding to a close, I thought it would be a nice way for the kids to spend their last visit to the computer lab.

One of the classes that came in was a class of third graders. I played them the 60 second teaser video for the Hour of Code, explained a bit about what coding was, and then introduced the importance of going patiently step by step and iterating your code by showing part of a BrainPop movie, Computer Programming: One Step at a Time. (We had a limited amount of time, so I only showed them the part that covered the basic concepts.) I demonstrated the site we would be using, Tynker.com, and told them that I would not answer questions once they started working. If they ran into trouble, they had to figure it out on their own or ask another student.

Then something amazing happened. The whole class of third graders sat down and worked for 35 solid minutes until the bell rang for lunch. Only three students raised their hands to ask a question, and when I reminded them that I wasn’t going to help them, they found other children not only to help solve their problem, but to explain what they had to do and why they had to do it that way.

Both their teacher and I were happy to see these 8 and 9 year olds demonstrating critical thinking, problem solving, and collaborative skills as they worked to get Pixel the puppy back home to his family. As teachers, we naturally want to do everything we can to help students learn. We need to remember that sometimes the best way we can do that is not to help them at all.