5th & 3rd Grade Coding - Plan for the next few weeks!

Hello!  Things have slowed down drastically in 5th Grade Coding and in 3rd grade we have hit a bit of a wall also.  Many of the students have had difficulty in advancing their programming beyond the basic concept they came up with several weeks ago.  They have great ideas but are stuck after having built the basic framework of their game.  With this in mind we are shifting to a new set of lessons planned for the upcoming weeks.

I will create small programs for the students to "remix" and fix.  Each will focus on a new set of skills that they may find helpful in writing their own programs.  My thinking is that these lessons may get them past their difficulties.  While they may not finish the project they have planned, they will gain the skills needed to finish the project.

 If your student is really interested in finishing this project, they can continue working at their own pace, on their own time, and finish when they are able.  I can continue to provide assistance to these students through the next semester, as some of these projects are quite good and deserve the chance to be seen through to the end.  I feel like these are worthwhile goals and maybe we were just over reaching for the time we had available in the semester.

Click on the picture below to link to the Scratch site for our first remix:

5th grade Coding

Today I showed the students the "Featured Programmer" page and it turned out that many hadn't seen it yet so make sure you go back and check out the entry for last week featuring his great work.

This week's Featured Programmer is...

Jaden M.

Jaden is programming what appears to be a pretty straight forward game of Tic-Tac-Toe.  However he is finding out that getting the programming to work when playing against the computer is VERY involved.  If you think about it the program needs to know what spaces are already taken, which are still available, when it's the computer's turn, and more!  If you want to program the computer to play with a strategy then the programmer needs to understand both the strategy and how to program it as well.  This all equals a lot of logic and hard work.  For that reason alone Jaden has been chosen as our Featured Programmer of the week!

5th grade Coding

Today everyone was working on their Scratch projects and doing many different kinds of things within those programs.

I'm going to start to highlight a student or two each week and the project they are working on.   

This week's featured programmer is Noah A.!

Noah is creating "The Game of Science" that will help people to learn about the scientific method.  He has this great little frog that snatches flies out of the air.  The flies are tied to terms and ideas that you would need to know about when planning an experiment in Science class.  The goal is to "catch" all the flies by answering the games questions correctly.  

Noah's game is:

• challenging to code
• a fun idea
• educational
• unique
• AWESOME!

3rd grade Scratch Coding

Here is a link to some projects I am sharing to help you begin creating your own Scratch game or animation.  The program we worked on together in class is also here for you to look at to remember what we did.

Some of my programs are basic and some are pretty complicated.  Check them out and figure out what kinds of features you'd like to include in your project and I'll teach those in class.

5th Grade Coding - Scratch

Today the students were working on their individual Scratch projects.  Every student in my 2nd hour came with their homework done!  Way to go 2nd hour!

The students that were ready with their homework got some extra assistance  on their project.  In 2nd hour this meant that we were able to actually create a mini game that contained bit of programming that almost all of the students needed to learn to help create their game.  They learned how to code so the program knew when a score had been made, how to keep and show the score, how to create random movement in their project and how to get precise movement as well.  This got them a good start on creating basic games.

With games in mind I wanted to share that Code.org has extended their lessons to creating a shareable Flappy Bird game based aps.  Below is a link to a game I created to try it out and the link to where you and your child can go to create their own.  You can share the link through Facebook, Twitter, through a text, or if none of those work for you you can do what I did and copy the web address and email it to someone.

Flappy Code -Lesson 1

My game!

5th Grade Coding - Scratch Project Homework

Today in 5th grade the students began to work on their first major independent programming challenge.  Each student is choosing their own project and writing code to make it happen.  Some are doing educational games and other games just for fun.  A few are using Scratch to program animation and tell a story.  Some are art creating programs.

Here is a game I am working on coding.  Target Timer is a work in progress and there is a lot more to come as I teach the students about the possibilities of Scratch.

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/27292323/

    Target Timer

The students  have homework for the first time.  They need to make a detailed list of the things they are going to need to figure out in order to reach their project goal.  In other words, what with the program need to do in order to create the game or animation they have planned.

An example from the Target Timer game above would be that I needed to figure out:

• how the program would know if the target had been hit
• how to keep score
• how to know if the new score was better than the last
• how to get the target to change size
• how to get the target to move to a random location

The students need to bring this list next week to class so I have a point at which to begin helping them.  I'll be able to help them prioritize their list and give them something to work on while I am helping other students.

3rd & 5th Grade Coding Class

This semester in both 3rd and 5th grade I am teaching a class on coding.  Everyone starts out working through the tutorials at Code.org and students work at their own pace.  The kids really don't need much assistance in this part of the class as the people at Code.org have done an excellent job making the work engaging and understandable,  and the lessons build on one another.  While I expected the 5th grade students to be way out in front of the younger children I have found this to not be the case.  Many of our 3rd graders are keeping pace with the 5th grade class.

Code.org is accessible to everyone - go to the website, sign in, and try your hand at coding right along with the kids.  It's a lot of fun and will give you something to talk with your children about.

Learn to code here!