Today we started our Coding Club 2017. About 20 3rd and 4th graders. It was really FUN. Plenty of enthusiasm and good work.
The introduction was amazing… A really short speech about what coding is with a “live” example. When all of them sat in front of their computers, Lanschool made the magic and all the computers’ screens turned blue showing the message “Please look at the front of the classroom”…
“How did you do it?” “Well, guys, this is the real world of CODING! You can make computers do WHAT YOU WANT!” I had so much fun seeing their faces of stupefaction mixed with a touch of curiosity and astonishment all together. I know it was kind of “cheating” but it was a good example of going beyond the standard use of technology they are used to.
Today we worked on the Minecraft Adventurer course at code.org. All of them were really engaged and did not show any sign of frustration even when they got stuck into some of the puzzles they were unable to disentangle at first.
Basic concept today: loops. And loops within loops. I think that it a quite high concept being the first day, but they all learned about the incredible power of wrapping everything within a “repeat x times” block and even a repeat block within a REPEAT block…
Looking forward to our next session. The timing is quite perfect, as next week is Spring Break. Ready to take the break and come back with batteries fully recharged to keep on trying.
Next step: PAIR PROGRAMMING.Try to solve the same puzzles together using the minimum possible amount of code blocks. And then, ready for session 3: introduction to SCRATCH.
Way to go, McBee coders!!!
PS: Thank you, Ms. Myers and Ms. Castro, for being there the whole time.
🙂
