The "Hour of Code" at the Lower School: Programming in the Classroom

In honor of Computer Science Education Week (December 9-15, 2013), the website code.org launched the "Hour of Code" program with the idea that every student in every school should have the opportunity to learn code.  There are several opportunities for our Lower School students to program:

Kindergarten used the BeeBot, a programmable robot, in literacy in January.

In December, 2nd graders completed the first hour of code on the code.org website.  In January and February they did also used the LightBob app and the BeeBot app.  After March break they plan to create math word problems in MIT's Scratch programming environment.

During several technology classes this winter, 4th, 5th, and 6th graders also used the code.org website, creating online accounts so they could continue their progress at home if desired.  4th graders have been learning Scratch as well and are now learning how to use Scratch with the LEGO WeDO kits' sensors and motors.

5th graders will spend their spring trimester in the technology lab learning how to program in LOGO, an educational programming language (in fact, the first programming language for children) originally designed in 1967.

6th graders have been spending a lot of their time in the technology lab exploring the new online Scratch 2.0 programming environment.  They are currently working on programming challenges from the Creative Computing Curriculum Guide, a design-based introduction to computational thinking.

5th Grade Update- April and May in Review

5th graders have spent the last two months programming in a LOGO environment.  LOGO is an oldie but a goodie.  I used it myself as a 5th grader.  It is a great piece of software for the students to use in the spring because it aligns perfectly with the math unit on geometry.  Students programmed a turtle to move around the screen, drawing pictures, and they used their math knowledge to calculate the interior angles of polygons to draw shapes.  Every class they built on their previous knowledge to learn LOGO commands, write their own commands, introduce variables into their commands, and combine commands to create more complicated commands.  For example, each student taught their turtle how to draw a square by writing their own square command and how to draw a triangle by writing their own triangle command using the following commands that the turtle already knew: repeat, forward, and right.  They then combined their square and triangle commands to teach the turtle how to draw a house.  The final culminating project was getting the turtle to draw a scene related to their science "Project O" field trip.