Have you ever wanted to learn something new? Maybe you
heard about a cool new game from a friend, or a hot new nail trend found its
way to your favorite Pinterest board. For me that “thing” is computer
coding. I don’t remember it being an option in school for elementary
students, let alone female elementary students (or junior high, or high school
for that matter!), but when I found it a few years ago it sparked a new found
interest that reignited my passion for learning.
I started off small – www.code.org
– very user friendly, already laid out for you, and immediate results.
How fun! I thought my students would LOVE this, so I made some generic
user accounts and let them go for it during rotations. I had several
students take their information home and continue the courses over the year and
eventually they had made some really neat things.
The next year I made it my mission to have the whole school
participate in the hour of code in early December. My homeroom even
Skype-ed with A REAL MICROSOFT PROGRAMER! It was fascinating to see my
students respond so eagerly to something that I had only learned about a few
years prior.
We continued to implement different coding based activities
as a 3rd grade team the following year, which was made even more
engaging with different apps, lots of team work, and even some new STEAM
activities that required the kids to know how coding worked.
This year though – oh man. This year is THE
year. This year we started our first code club at RAE! It has been
a dream of mine for the last SEVERAL years – and now here we are! Because
it is the first time we’ve tried this I went with a club that google
created. This first 5 week session the students are focusing on story
telling through code using www.cs-first.com
(to learn about coding, what to code, and the gist of how to code what the
daily project is), and www.scratch.com to
create story telling masterpieces!
I’ve given you all this background information because one
split second of the code club will forever stay in my heart. The kids
were hard at work coding their sprites to move about the screen and jump
between backdrops. They were laughing, joking, and trying to decide how
to get the best story for our end of club showcase. I looked over at one
of the students who normally watches the video once and goes on to create, and
they looked stumped – how was this going to work? They didn’t have the
video from the previous lesson, and this particular activity relied on the knowledge
from it. I started to walk over to help, and had to stop. Another
student who is one that can be quite reserved during our afternoons had jumped
out of their seat and sprung into helper mode. She was the guru.
She knew exactly what prompts to select to make it work. She was helping
her friend, and together they made it work. I just watched with a
smile. My normally quiet little girl empowered by her knowledge was
something that I love to see as a mom and as teacher.
That is what it is all about. Teaching everyone that
they can do it, and all you have to do is try. Even coding at 8 or 30 J
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