PC LOGO Activitty

I have a chance to do PC Logo activity with 6 year old boy. He is in Primary 1 at Saint Georgest School.He knows simple things about computer since he learns computer subject at school and use computer at home to play games but it was his first experience using the PC Logo. He also have learn about shapes examples square, rectangle and triangle.

Before we start the activity, I explained to him that we want to draw shapes (square, rectangle and triangle) by writing the instruction so that the turtle move. I showed him an example first, how to draw a square. I told him the basic instructions examples fd (forward), rt (right turn), lt (left turn)and cs (cancel). I showed him one by one so that he can follow my explanations. Before that I asked him what is a square. Confidently he answered my question that it must have four equal sides.

I asked him how far should the turtle move forward to make 1 side of the square. Then asked him, the turtle should turn left or right to draw other side of the square. Since he only 6 year old and has not learn about angles, I just told him that the angles of square and rectangle is always 90 degree. We continue this stapes until the turtle finally make a square. I repeat the stapes and gave him two more examples but this time he was the one who typing the instructions. After a few trials and errors, he eventually can do it by him self so I asked him to draw different size of a square and he did it very well.

From his experience above, I asked him to draw a rectangle. This time I did not show him how to do it but remind him about the sides of the rectangle. He knew that rectangle has opposite sides equal. By living him doing the activity by him self, just a few minutes he finished the task and did it very well too.This showed that he can relate a square and a rectangle and knows the different of this two shapes.

But he have difficulty in drawing triangle. It is because of the angles of the triangle. He did not have any ideas of the angles of a triangle. He did try to draw it by him self but at last we did it together. I can see his effort to draw the triangle and he did have the idea of drawing the triangle. He started with turning the turtle with his selected angle and continue to draw 1 side of the triangle. We did it together by discussing how far the turtle should move and what angle should the turtle turn until a triangle was formed.

From the above activity, I can see that PC Logo can be used for Lower Primary pupils by introducing basic shapes that they already learned. But we only can use simple instruction so that it will not be complicated to them. In this activity I did not showed him using REPEAT instruction because I did not want him be confused and let him to get use of the basic instruction first.

Pupils will enjoy doing the activity as the enjoyment of my sample while doing the activity. We should give them chances to do trial and error so that they realized their mistake and improve them selves. Although the activity is time concern, the important thing is that the pupils gain their own knowledge. From my point of view, the effective way of doing this activity is by giving each pupils chance do the activity by them selves that is school must provide enough computers to all of the pupils so that they have chances to do more trial and error and try to do more activities by them selves.