In celebration of Computer Science Education Week, all K-8 students are taking part in the Hour of Code. This week is a teaser of what’s to come during the 2nd semester when all classes will focus on Computer Science in more depth but it’s exciting to participate in a worldwide event like this! Here’s what happened today.
3rd Grade:
After learning more about Computer Programming from Tim & Moby at BrainPop, 3rd Grade got busy starting to animate their names in Scratch. I’m excited to see the finished animations on Friday. My favorite moment with 3rd grade was at this point in the video …
… one of the students said “Well, he DID open the jar.” Yes, he did. You have to be very specific when programming a computer.
5th Grade:
5th Grade started off their first Hour of Code day watching a video about the Top 10 Reasons to Code and discussing who were in the posters we have displayed in the Computer Lab:
The girls (5th Grade is one of our two all girls classes) knew who two out of the five (we don’t have the Ashton Kutcher poster up in the lab) were. They didn’t know Mark Zuckerberg though when I mentioned Facebook, they knew who he was. I loved the reaction when I talked about who the women in the posters were (especially Susan Wojcicki – what 5th grader doesn’t love YouTube) and about Grace Hopper and why she is honored during Computer Science Education Week.
Ready to code, 5th Grade also started working on animating their names in Scratch. I am looking forward to their finished animations and maybe some coded Christmas cards next week, too!
6th Grade:
6th Grade (our other all girls class) also started with a discussion about the posters though this time they knew all of the men but neither of the women. Makes you wonder why they don’t know about the women? 6th Grade also watched the Top 10 Reasons to Code video:
After this introduction, 6th Grade researched Grace Hopper to try to answer these two questions:
- Who is Grace Hopper?
- What does Grace Hopper have to do with Computer Science Education Week?
The best part of this research was hearing the girls exclaim “She was amazing!” and ask “Why don’t we know about her?” Well, now they do!
Did you know that the President also tried his hand at coding today at the White House? He was using Code with Anna and Elsa from Code.org. Some of our students have tried this and others will at some point.
If your child is interested in coding, you can set up an account for them on the Scratch Website or install the Offline Editor for them to use on a home computer. At school, students use either the Offline Editor or the Online Editor without saving and their completed projects are uploaded to a single account for the Computer Lab.