Reflections on Teaching HTML coding with Year 5

This week I introduced HTML coding at one school and did a second
lesson at another school

In the first session we started by viewing the source of a couple of
simple web pages to help explain that the browser converts the code
into a web page. It was important to say that we would be writing code
that was much easier as there was a moment of horror when looking at
even a simple web page. I may make an even simpler page to avoid this
next time. I then introduced my online code sheet and demonstrated how
to copy, paste and adapt a heading and lines of text. I saved my demo
and showed how it opens up in a browser.

Pupils went of to code their pages. All but five or six coped with
this with no problems. Those that had problems had either left out an
end tag or mixed their tags with a header start and a paragraph
ending. There is a real ohhh factor when pupils see their work in a
browser for the first time. Some pupils went on to adding bold,
italics and bullet points in the first session. In the second session
about a third went on the create links.

The biggest problem with the lesson came not from the coding but from
the network restrictions in place. In two schools pupils couldn't view
the source of the page. This meant they had to copy a page from the
network and open it in notepad, less than a minute for you and I but a
complex operation for a third of most classes.

At the end of the session I shared the W3Schools link so they could
learn some more HTML in their own time. It was good in the second
session when some pupils came back and said they were coding pages at
home.

In a couple of weeks time they will FTP their pages onto the web. I
will try and find time to reflect on how that goes.

The planning for this is on http://code-it.co.uk

Phil Bagge

Sent from my iPhone