Kindergarten, 1st, & 2nd Grades
The primary grades went back to work in Code.org this round. However, rather than picking up where they left off in their various courses, students skipped ahead in order to be sure of covering all of the important programming concepts for their grade. Kindergarten did a number of lessons centered on using loops (repeats) effectively. There were lessons at each level using code to create drawings and games. Second grade had the chance to try out some different activities that involved coding music and programming in Minecraft. A few students were even able to complete their grade level Code.org course!
3rd Grade
During this round the 3rd graders returned to a project they started way back in October/ November. Back then they researched a science topic and then coded a Scratch project to share what they learned. The students added pictures from Britannica School and used key press events to switch between them. Each picture shared facts related to the image.
To complete the project students created a poster that complemented their Scratch project. They added copper foil tape wires to the poster to act as "buttons" used to trigger the key presses that run the Scratch project. The poster was connected to the computer with an input/output device called Makey Makey. (The Makey Makey allows one to use any electrical conductor as a switch controlling key presses on the computer.) At the end of the week, with posters and Scratch projects complete, students presented their work to a visiting class from Kindergarten. This presentation piece is an important part of the STEM lab curriculum and being cart bound has limited how much of it I have been able to do this year. The Scratch projects from round 3 can be found in this studio.
4th Grade
The 4th graders worked on a Scratch project in this round using the Ask and Answer commands. This pair of commands lets the students write programs that solicit user input and to respond to the inputs received. We started the week by exploring some example projects and discussing how they used Ask and Answer blocks. As a group we brainstormed a few ideas for the kinds of projects these blocks could be used for, then the students went to work. They created a dazzling array of projects ranging from quizzes to chat-bots to mad libs to choose your own adventure stories. The projects were added to a class studio where the students could try out the projects created by their peers. Part of the project included leaving constructive feedback for their peers in the different projects' comment section. This last piece is part of practicing good digital citizenship.
5th Grade
One of the trickier programming concepts to master is using lists. A list in a computer program is exactly what it sounds like, an ordered collection of bits of information. The confusion comes from the fairly large number of commands needed to use a list in a program. Many of these commands need to be nested withing other commands in a particular order to work properly. Fifth grade's prompt this round was to create a project that uses lists. As with the 4th grade project, we began with a selection example projects. After talking about those I led a code along so students could practice creating and manipulating lists. Next, students got to work on list projects of their own. There was a lot of testing and revising of code to get things working, and I am really proud of the perseverance the students showed. It was especially great to see students helping each other through the troubleshooting process. The projects have been collected in this studio.
