More than an Hour of Code in Friends Lower School

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For Computer Science Education Week, all divisions of Friends Seminary organized special coding and programming activities.  During the December 11th Buddy Time, Third and Fourth graders explored the logic of programming with their Kindergarten and First Grade friends.

The Third and Fourth Graders learned that when it comes to teaching younger children, preparation pays off. In Tech Class they went online to get an overview of ScratchJr.  They then chose a ScratchJr worksheet that connected up with their buddies’ interests and practiced going through it. Those who job it was to introduce the the Bee-Bot robots performed several trial runs in K411, our Tech classroom.

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Fourth grade students got ready for Buddy Time by going through activity worksheets at the ScratchJr website.

Since the older students had already tried out their lessons in Tech Class, teaching the Kindergarteners and First Graders during the Hour of Code went smoothly; students in all six classes learned a lot. Our Lower School “upperclassmen” also remarked that ScratchJr was great for their younger friends because it didn’t require reading.

Chris and Danielle’s students were matched with Linda’s students and they all worked with the Bee-Bots.  Though these robots have just a few simple controls on their backs, when the Kindergarteners and First Graders collaborated, they quickly realized that the Bee-Bots could follow complicated set of commands.

When they returned to Tech Class this week, students asked,

“Are we doing ScratchJr again?”

“No,” their teacher said. “We are returning to Scratch (Sr). We have so much work to do!”

Third graders are using the graphics program Pixie to design their own characters. Then with If Statements, they are causing something to happen when two of their characters meet in Scratch.

The fourth graders are programming their original heroes to travel through a maze. Soon they’ll be dreaming up obstacles that these heroes must encounter and eventually overcome.

In the more robust version of Scratch, concepts that ScratchJr and Bee-Bots introduce to young children are deepened and extended.

Two Bee-Bots live in each kindergarten classroom and ScratchJr is on all kindergarten and first grade iPads.

Go coding in the Lower School!

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