Learning More About Coding

Today Mrs. Boucher, our K-5 tech integration teacher, came to class and got our class started with some new computer coding apps that we had not tried yet! Last month I taught the students in our class about the app Kodable, which is a coding game requiring the player to give "Kodable" certain computer commands to navigate his way through different mazes of increasing difficulty. This morning Mrs. Boucher came in to teach us more about what coding is and to teach us how to use two new apps to practice coding skills. We started by making the rug in our book area into a large grid and using different arrow cards to direct a stuffed animal through the grid to a chair (see photos below).

Mrs. Boucher talked to the students about how we were giving the stuffed animal "commands" with our arrow cards, telling him how to move through the grid. She explained that all computer programs are controlled by codes that give the computer commands and tell it what to do. We connected this to our experience with the app Kodable and how, in the game, we place arrows to give computer commands, creating a code to move Kodable through the games' mazes. Mrs. Boucher then showed us two new coding apps called Daisy the Dinosaur and Light Bot - Hour of Code, which both have the same idea as Kodable (deciding what computer commands to give in order to navigate different puzzles) but are a bit more challenging. Students in our class had time to try these apps on the ipads with partners and had a lot of fun! These apps should all be free in the Apple App store if you want to put them on your devices at home for students to use. They are a great early way for kids to gain exposure to the world of computer coding!