Coding for Kids
Table of Contents
5 Ways to Go #BeyondOneHour
This year’s Hour of Code was a huge hit in classrooms across the world! Take advantage of the momentum CS Ed Week provides – here are 5 ways to take your class beyond an Hour of Code:
1. Remind students of their success
We’re guessing your students showed some serious motivation during Hour of Code—and loved the encouragement they received. Let’s keep them riding that wave!
Hang up their HOC certificates to give them a sense of pride
- To print Hour of Code certificates for your students, just select the “Gradebook” tab, go to “Hour of Code”, and click the “Print All Certificates” button.
Show them your classroom’s lines of code – and set future goals.
- To view lines of code, just go to your teacher dashboard!
Share your classroom’s showcase with parents in an email or newsletter!
- Learn how to share your classroom’s showcase!
2. Encompass all learning styles
Coding isn’t geared toward only a certain type of student – so don’t let any drop off! With seven different learning styles, we know it can be hard (or even impossible) to engage everyone at once. Here’s how to target all learning styles in one lesson:
Pick an activity and project it onto the board as this teacher did.
- Visual and aural learners benefit from seeing and walking through it, and electing a verbal learner to go up and explain it could help everyone. Logical learners will love hearing the code laid out and explained, and everyone will enjoy trying it out themselves.
Take the activity to the iPads!
- Physical learners will love the tactile element of coding on iPads, and social learners thrive with group coding projects (try assigning a group of interested students to create a multiplayer game!) Solitary learners may prefer to take an assigned activity to a comfy chair and complete it on their own (here’s how to assign an assignment to a student from your teacher account).
3. Take coding offline
Mix it up during STEM time! Use offline time to teach computational thinking, a skill that guides kids through all walks of life.
Think creatively to explain computational thinking; for example, a computer scientist in this article by the New York Times drew parallel lines between “a child filling her backpack and caching (how computers retrieve and store information needed later).”
Introduce activities that encourage algorithmic thinking, like having students guide each other through an obstacle course!
Tynker Tip: Print Tynker code blocks to use in your classroom for everyday activities!
4. Augment any subject with coding
Explore coding from all angles—bring it into your social studies or math curriculum to provide an exciting, interactive experience that deepens learning of both the subject at hand, and, of course, coding!
Any one of our 200+ STEM activities can be worked into your lesson plans. Kids can learn about the planets with Solar System or deepen their understanding of the ecosystem with Ecological Pyramid.
When it comes to integrating coding with other subjects, the possibilities are endless! We’ve seen teachers use Tynker to create flashcards, tell stories, and even map the tributaries of a river.
5. Foster peer learning
Capture your class’s attention by making peer learning interactive and multifaceted. They’ll explore each other’s solutions, and get a chance to watch each other’s thought processes and results laid out on the screen.
“There is a wealth of evidence that peer teaching is extremely effective for a wide range of goals, content, and students of different levels and personalities.” –McKeachie et al
This teacher encourages her students to teach one another through code!
A huge part of coding is problem-solving, and every person approaches problems differently. Peer learning combines the benefits of collaboration with technical learning! When kids team up, they end up with more ideas to sift through and an opportunity to develop life skills like collaboration.
During Hour of Code, we saw lots of students working together to solve our activities, like this cute classroom!
Thank you to @MsD_iIntegrate and @AllSaintsVALib for sharing the above photos of your students enjoying Tynker!
