Lesson #6

Introduction

• Text Transfer (Barefoot Bytes) - Pupils have to get a passage of text (perhaps a paragraph from a favourite book) across the room as quickly as possible. Start with a group at one end of the room writing out the text (without the rest of the class knowing what the text is). The aim is for this text to be written by a group across the opposite side of the room. Pupils discuss how they can quickly transfer the message, such as shouting a word at a time, taking it in turns to speak, quickly stating letters, holding up words individually, saying the first and last letters of each word to see if it can be guessed, etc. Pupils experiment with each suggested technique to see which is most effective by timing how long it takes to transfer the text. Pupils refine their chosen technique to make it faster and more accurate. This activity encourages pupils to make comparisons with transferring data packets across the Internet. You will also need a stopwatch.