I am also working with the Advanced Learners this year at Brooklyn on Thursday mornings. I will see a small group of 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders and work with them on coding and computational thinking.
The 2nd graders logged into their chromebooks for the first time on Thursday and they were very excited! I will have them start by logging into Code.org next time and beginning Course 2.
The 3rd graders began the Storytelling theme in CS-First. The first lesson is an introduction on how to work between the two tabs, CS-First and Scratch, and take a survey about what they know.
The 4th graders started the Art theme in CS-First and they were very excited to get going as they did a bit of CS-First last year!
On Friday, I saw one 3rd grade class and one 4th grade class. Both classes got logged into the network computers and then logged into Google Classroom. This is new learning for them, as they are used to just logging into Chromebooks. 2-step verification is a bit different and challenging since they have to type their email address and then again type their username and password. Once they got in, we went to Code.org and got logged in. I started the 3rd graders on Course 3 and the 4th graders began the Accelerated Course.
The current 4th graders had exposure to coding last year and I am confident they are ready to take on a faster paced course. There are always exceptions, and I am open to students moving to course 4 if they feel it's a better fit for them.
During Computer Science, I also hope to introduce some of the items we use during Coding Club, which will be starting in October. (More on that later.)This time, I introduced the students to the Sphero balls that we have. Our generous PTO donated a class set for use to use (12) last year. We discussed the difference between Bluetooth and infrared technologies and then I demonstrated how to pair the Sphero with the iPad. I took this time to lay out my expectations for this device. The 3rd graders should all get a chance to drive the Sphero around, check out it's capabilities, play tag, and just discover. The 4th graders should be moving from the driving (tag) apps to the coding apps since they had last year to discover the basics. Tickle and SPRK are the apps we will begin to explore. These apps are fairly new and allow students to code the path for their Sphero. They also use Blockly coding, which is what Code.org and Scratch use, so the format should be familiar to them.
I am excited to work with the students and watch them discover, play, and problem solve this year!
Rock the Code!
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