Introducing Coding in Your Classroom:
1) Play Tynker’s “Dragon Journey” without giving students any instructions. Let them work independently and silently. Allow them to become frustrated with a task like this so they can work on perseverance, commitment, and problem solving.
2) Blog Reflection: How did you feel while you were completing this activity? Explain what was happening with your thinking.
3) Go back to Tynker and let them work in partnerships to try to figure out any tasks they were struggling with. This can help them value the perspectives, insights and collaborative approaches of their peers.
4) Blog Reflection: Did you prefer working alone and figuring out the tasks on your own? Or, did you prefer working with others? Why?
5) Divide the class into two groups: those that want to work collaboratively and those that want to work solitarily. Turn students loose on exploring some of the basic apps suited for early elementary students (see links below).
6) Show students, “What Most Schools Don’t Teach” video.
7) Go to code.org and complete The Hour of Code.
8) Blog Reflection: Now that you know what coding is and what it feels like to program a computer to do what you want it to, how do you feel about it? What are your thoughts and experiences on coding?
9) Using what they have learned, turn them loose on other iPad apps and websites to inquire freely.
10) Go back to code.org and learn the next round of tutorials, or introduce them to other resources below to complete tasks of your choosing.
Here are some resources I used to learn about different coding apps and websites:
7 Apps for Teaching Children Coding Skills
Coding With Your Kids: A Guide for Parents
Here are the free apps we are using to start our introduction into coding. Some of them are very basic, and some of them allow for greater creative potential. Experiment with them to see what fits your needs and your students’ readiness levels:
Cato’s Hike, Light-bot Hour of Code, Light-bot LITE, Kodable, Daisy the Dinosaur, Cargo-Bot, A.L.E.X and Hopscotch. We will also be using Scratch and a few other websites mentioned in the links above.