Unplugged lessons

Here are lessons that can be taught when students do not have devices. The "Required" lessons need to be taught to address the standards indicated. The rest are available here for your use as needed.

Required: Troubleshooting for 1st and 2nd grades

Teaches these standards: 

K-2.CD.1: Use appropriate terminology in identifying and describing computer hardware.

K-2.CD.2: Describe and troubleshoot basic hardware and software problems using appropriate terminology.

Preparation: Read through this slide show

Materials needed: none

Time: 20 minutes

To teach: Have this slide show up on your ActivPanel.

Go through the slide show with the students, following all prompts to get responses from the students. Use thumbs up, thumbs down for a total participation technique. 

Required: Computer hardware and software for 3rd-5th

Teaches these standards: 3-5.CD.1: Model how computer hardware and software work together to accomplish tasks.
3-5.CD.3: Describe how internal and external parts of computing devices function to form a system.

Preparation: Go to this EdPuzzle video and see how it works.  Go through the slide show to see the progression of the lesson and activities involved.

Materials needed: pencil and paper for each pair of students

Time: at least 45 minutes. May take 2 class periods, depending on the amount of discussion.

To teach:  Go through this EdPuzzle video with your students. Then do the slide show up on your ActivPanel. Go through it with students, following all prompts, and having students follow all directions given. (Another option is to leave the EdPuzzle for next week as review.)

Required: Troubleshooting for 3rd-5th (Teach the hardware/software lesson above first)

Teaches this standard: 3-5.CD.2: Determine potential solutions to solve simple hardware and software problems using common troubleshooting strategies.

Preparation: Go through this slide show to familiarize yourself with the content covered.

Materials needed: none

Time: 20-30 minutes, depending on student contributions

To teach: Go through this slide show with the students, pausing to accept responses where indicated. This is meant to be very interactive. Some students will be really good at troubleshooting and will have a lot of good advice and experience to contribute to this discussion.

Required: Impact of Technology discussions for 4th and 5th grades

Teaches this standard: 3-5.IC.1: Describe the positive and negative impacts of technology on one’s personal life, society, and our culture.

Preparation: Print out a document with the talking points. Read it and hold the ideas in your head to be able to lead a natural discussion with the students.

Materials needed: document with talking points 

[Cell phones] [Internet] [digital cameras] 

Time: 5-10 minutes each time. Do only one each week.

To teach: Either do this as the first activity of class or as a transition from typing to coding. 

1. Pose the question and allow 30 seconds wait time for students to think before you start to call on students.

2. Give them prompts and ask them questions to guide them to state some of the points on your sheet. Make sure to include impacts on themselves, society, and culture. 

3. An alternate way to format the activity if students are seated at tables: Pose the initial question to the class and have them discuss for a 3 minutes at their tables. Then have each table share out what they said and write their points on the board. Elaborate on the points they bring up to include points on the discussion guide. Then ask specific questions to help them think of other points on the discussion guide they didn't think of yet.

Required: Human vs Machine intelligence for 4th and 5th grades

Teaches this standard: 3-5.CD.4: Describe what distinguishes humans from machines, focusing on human intelligence versus machine intelligence.

Preparation: Go through this slideshow to familiarize yourself with the concepts. Note the question on the last slide. Decide how you want students to answer that. Do you want to post this in Google Classroom and have them respond on their Chromebooks? Do you want them to pair up with a partner and share? Do you want tables to work together to come up with a common explanation and write it out?

Materials needed: Whatever you need for students to answer the last question

Time: 25-40 minutes, depending on how much discussion you encourage.

To teach: Go through the slideshow, pausing for students to answer questions. This is meant to be very interactive.

Required: Packets of information for 5th grade

Teaches this standard: 3-5.NI.2: Model how information is broken down into smaller pieces, transmitted as packets through multiple devices over networks and the internet, and reassembled at the destination. 

Preparation: Go through this slide show and print it out. Pages 2-4 are your lesson plan. Pages 5-15 will be cut up and used in the course of the lesson. As you cut each page into fourths, paperclip them together. Page 4 has a link to a video that you can show either to introduce the lesson or as part of the wrap-up.

Materials needed: the printed slide show

Time: 45 minutes

To teach: Follow the lesson plan on the first 4 slides. 

Ruff Ruffman, Humble Media Genius

Collection of short video clips and teacher guides for many digital citizenship topics. Best for 2nd-4th grades.

https://ket.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/ruffruffman/

These are fairly short lessons. They will not take up the whole 45 minute period.

Monster Coding for K & 1

Practice with directionality of arrows. 

Preparation: Print off slides 7 and 8 of this slide show as handouts for the students. 

Materials needed: crayons

Time: 20 minutes

To teach: Have this slide show up on your ActivPanel.

Show slide #1 to class. Point to the START HERE block. Have students look at #1 on their handout. Ask what their first arrow is. Move your finger to the blue monster on the right. Ask what the next arrow is. Move your finger down to the gray monster. And on until you land on the green monster. Have students color the monster on their handout green. Then have them do puzzle #2. Gradually release them until they can look  at the arrows on their handout, look at the monsters on the screen, and follow the arrows to figure out the ending monster and color it in.

Computer Coding Worksheets for K-2

available at Teachers Pay Teachers for free download!

Managing multiple papers for each student quickly becomes unmanageable, so I recommend that you print out one copy and put it under the document camera and have the class do it together. Another option would be to laminate a set and give each student one and a dry erase marker and an eraser. They have a set amount of time to write on their laminated sheet. Then they erase and pass to a neighbor. 

Digital Citizenship: multiple topics for 1st-5th

Multiple video-based lessons covering numerous topics around the theme of digital citizenship

Preparation: Go to Edpuzzle interactive videos on digital citizenship and find a couple of topics you want to teach. Pay attention to grade levels stated.  Have each video you want to use ready to go in a separate tab to eliminate navigation time while teaching. Here's a good one about digital footprint that's not on that page.

Materials needed: Just your ActivPanel

Time: 15 minutes for each video, more or less, depending on how long you pause for interaction. 

To teach: Go through the video with the students and every time they pause for a question, poll the students. Use thumbs up/thumbs down for true/false questions. Have students hold up a number to indicate their answer on a multiple choice question.

Peanut butter and jelly algorithms for 2nd and 3rd grades

Students practice giving step by step directions, like what is needed in a computer program.

Preparation: Read through the lesson plan and print it out to be able to teach from it. Open tabs on your browser as linked in document under Materials and Resources.

Materials needed: jar of peanut butter (or sunflower butter to avoide allergies), jar of jelly, bag of sliced bread, knife, a few pieces of blank paper, pencils

Time: 30 minutes

To teach: Follow the outline in the lesson plan.

Computational Thinking for 2nd-5th

Students learn what computational thinking is and practice breaking a complex problem down into smaller parts to solve.

Preparation: Check out all the links below ahead of time. Get comfortable with how the sites work.

Materials needed: none

Time: 20 - 30 minutes

To teach: Go to https://edpuzzle.com/media/5f3c0ba83453353f46b3525b (Sign in with Google) Play the video on your ActivPanel and every time it pauses for a question, have students vote on the answer. Should take 10-15 minutes. 

For 2nd grade: Go to http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/activities/ShapeSorter/, choose the Venn diagram with 2 overlapping circles, collaboratively set the rules, and get the students to tell you where to put each shape in order to follow the rules.

For 3rd-5th: Go to https://www.mathsisfun.com/games/towerofhanoi.html and get student suggestions to solve the puzzle. https://www.mathsisfun.com/games/allout.html is another fun puzzle to test the collective logic. 

Complex Patterns for 3rd-5th

Students will look for patterns in a variety of settings. Being able to identify patterns is a skill set necessary for coding.

Preparation: Go through the slide show in presentation mode to see the progression of the lesson and how questions are asked and answers revealed.

Materials needed: none

Time: 30 minutes

To teach: Have  the slide show up on your ActivPanel. Go through the slide show with the students, following all prompts to get responses from the students. 

The Wretched Stone for 4th and 5th

Students learn the value of limiting screen time.

Preparation: Watch the Youtube video of the read-aloud and get this slide show up and edited for your own teaching style. The link will force you to make your own copy. Look through the slide show so you are ready to fill in and edit slides. Read the speaker notes for the slides to see how to interact with them.

Materials needed: If you have your own copy of The Wretched Stone by Chris Van Allsburg, you do not need the video read-aloud on YouTube.

Time: 30 minutes

To teach:

Ask students what happens when people do too much screen time. How does it affect them? How does it affect the people around them? How do they feel when the people around them are on screens and won’t interact with them? 

Show Youtube video of the read-aloud

Switch over to the Google slide show that you made by clicking the link above in the preparation step. 

Review Game

Students can review vocabulary and concepts from previous lessons

Preparation: Print out these review questions. Go through them and highlight the ones that you want to use. Figure out the format of the review game. Will it be individual or in teams? Directions for Tic Tac Toe are at the end of the document. You could also prepare a Jeopardy game at https://jeopardylabs.com/. 

Materials needed: It depends on what format you choose for the review game.

Time: 10-30 minutes

To teach: This will vary depending on the format you choose.

Site with 8 unplugged lessons ready to print and use: https://www.csunplugged.org/en/topics/ 

CSpathshala national curriculum An amazing wealth of lessons! (Not all are unplugged, but most are.) These are from the country of India, so you will see some spelling and cultural differences.