Hour of Code

It's that time of the year again when we get to inspire students and teachers alike by exploring the learning, problem solving and fun of the Hour of Code; of course the site is available all year round. The bank of code games themes has grown huge and there is something for every age, gender and interest. Of course my favourite is the Minecraft coding.

Scratch Coding Maze Game - Self Guided Lesson

Coding is fun, but it's also a challenging critical thinking exercise that requires persistence. There are  many learning benefits to coding that stretch across the curriculum; however if you need convincing read this great infographic: 5 Reasons to Teach Kids to Code.

Last year I taught a Gifted and Talented group Scratch, and since have been teaching my own students, although finding a way for all students to follow was my challenge. So this year (holidays :-) I created a Scratch coding lesson that can be self-driven by students, although you can use each section as a guided lesson too. It is an introduction and scaffolds students knowledge on the basic coding, along with the thinking, planning and problem solving. I tried to give it a Maths focus with the games being based on basic facts. It is still in it's beginning phase, I hope to put it on a website for teachers and students, plus add quizzes and support material, as well as re-doing the screencasts when I find time. I would love you and your students to try Maze Game and give me feedback with your game links in the comments.

Teachers please feel free to try this Maze Game coding with your students. I suggest you sign up for a Scratch account with your school email so that your students can share their work with you. I suggest you can take the lesson yourself and decide if you want the students to do it alone, or use it for guided lessons where you can focus on a particular teaching point.



Below is the finished Maze Game that has been embedded into this blog; the link will take you to the Scratch project page. https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/116495873/

Hour of Code

 

The Hour of Code is an international event aimed at introducing students and teachers to coding while demystifying the concept of coding and teaching them some basics. The idea is to expose students to at least one hour of coding which many consider a new literacy and an essential skill for the future. 

I'm a strong supporter of coding as a literacy, maths and thinking tool; so I organised an 'Hour of Code' for all the classes at my school. As we have a computer suite next to the library I arranged for every class to be booked in the computer suite in their library time and had the student led puzzles shown above loaded, as most teachers had no idea about coding. The three puzzles were based on popular games and movies and guided students to code using the Scratch block format.

The interesting part was not only did more students have fun learning to code for the first time but I spotted many teachers engrossed in the coding puzzles too. Now that's what I call success; planting the seeds of coding curiosity. Below is some of the student's feedback.

Coding with Kids

I was lucky enough to be able to take a Gifted and Talented group this term, and I had been scratching to teach them coding using Scratch. I wanted to show them the basics so they could take their coding creations to new levels. However, I felt it important they end with a finished product to demonstrate the learning and give them a sense of achievement. 

I wanted the students to feel like they had created something with a purpose, but still challenging to them. The maths game seemed a way they could give back to their school friends by helping them with their Maths. The coding was also understandable to me when I tested it out. I like to understand the basic coding and why it works, the kids then extend and add their ideas as they play with code possibilities. It always comes back to critical thinking, if something is not working we say, "why?" and start looking at the logic of our code. That's deep thinking, it's reading, writing and maths; and it's just the beginning. My Maths students also started doing collaborative projects, designing games many groups decided to use Scratch as their game design, and their creativity and coding logic have truly impressed me.

Over fours days during the term the group met with me, I guided them through a series of basics then moved towards exploring a maths game model. Each week we learnt more skills to apply to the games. The students really personalised their games and tried to push the coding to get the game to do what we wanted. We learnt so much but also so many ways the code won't work!

After finishing the G&T group, I was convinced that my Maths students would benefit from learning to code. I dedicated one Maths block a week to coding. I started them on the same coding basic training as the other group, but then I gave them mini coding lessons based on the concepts (position and orientation) we have been learning. Most used my teaching and took the coding to new levels; we had some challenging conversations and I said, "I don't know" a lot, or I'd use other kids as experts which didn't take long. They have just finished their projects, and I'll create a special page on our wiki for their games. I want them to have a say in who gets their games, perhaps I should get them to try "sell" them to other teachers. 

The G&T students created maths games which were put on our school website for others to play, as well as embedding them on their own blogs as evidence. They particularly enjoyed the critical thinking and creating their own designs from code.

My Maths group created some quite diverse games with impressive coding which is the result of giving them complete control. We currently have the final games on our Maths wiki page here. All my students want to keep coding, it's challenging, a great way to problem solve collaboratively and they love it.
The previous group plus my Maths students have shown tremendous growth in critical thinking and problem solving. We have encountered some tricky code, and together we solved some 'glitches' but others we had to put on hold till next time. Learning to code is a process; you get better as you play and learn. So we will keep coding. 

And isn't it great that Scratch projects are so easy to embed?