This was our fourth year of providing a time when the whole Junior School came together to enjoy an hour of coding activities. Prior to the event teachers received an Hour of Code Plan.
The leaders for Coding & Robotics Club introduced and opened the event.
“We are happy to be introducing our fourth annual Hour of Code event. All over the world students participate in an ‘Hour of Code’, one of the largest learning campaigns in history. This year there are over 80,000 registered events around the world and we are one of nearly 1000 in Australia who are taking part in an hour of coding. The Hour of Code happens during Computer Science Education Week which is in December, but we won’t be at school then! So, we are doing ours today. Coding skills are not just for computers, we can use them in everyday tasks. This afternoon many of you will be challenging yourselves to write lines of code in Minecraft or creating your own Google Logo, others will be programming robots and having fun with unplugged games’.
Students in years 4, 5 & 6 completed activities online using Hour of Code.org moving to different areas of the school including our new Link facility, making it special!
Students from kindy to year 3 remained in the hall to rotate around coding and robotics activities. Kindy students navigated a road scene with Bee Bots, played the Bee Bot App on iPads and became physical robots following spoken instructions.
Prep students became robots following instructions to complete an obstacle course and programmed Blue Bots to locate shapes on the shape mat and identified places on a map.
Year 1 students created a Christmas scene on ScratchJr, programmed Blue Bots to sequence ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears story’ into the correct order and played ‘crossing the river’ game using directional language.
Year 2 students enjoyed two of the activities on Hour of Code.org;Kodable and Alice in Wonderland, they used Pro Bots to draw shapes and also played a game of ‘crossing the river’.
Year 3 students used Dash robots to complete a Christmas Book quest and programmed Pro Bots to write their names and draw shapes.
I have found that doing rotations for an hour with the younger children is much better than having them sitting at a screen and the girls get mobile interacting with the robots and unplugged games.
There are so many benefits to taking part in the Hour of Code, apart from whetting students’ appetite about coding and the associated skills, there is collaboration, critical thinking, problem solving, persistence and the satisfaction of acheiving a product at the end of an hour.
It is always rewarding when students’ feed back that they had not done much coding but they had received a certicate and how proud they are of their efforts!
If you have not tried an Hour of Code….please do…