Kids Who Code: Planning the 2016 Code-a-thon

It has become an annual tradition for my class to plan and host an event for Hour of Code during Computer Science Education Week.  In our inaugural year, my grade 2 class co-planned the first ever Kids Who Code Code-a-thon with Mrs. Caldwell's Kindergarten class.  Last year, my grade 1s planned the 2015 Code-a-thon event and invited students from our school and surrounding schools.  This year, my grade 1s collaborated with our partner class, the OLCS Kindergartens, to plan the 2016 Kids Who Code Code-a-thon. 

When we are working on a project with another class, we often use a to do list to guide us.  The to do list changes as we work together to complete the project.  We typically meet via video call to stay on track with our event planning.  This system of collaborative project-based learning worked well for us as we prepared for our big event!

One of our jobs for this project was writing instructions for our selected coding tools.  We saved them as PDFs to print out and we created a video version with narration.  This was a great opportunity to introduce procedural writing to my grade 1s and it always adds motivation to write for an authentic audience.  Check out our final shared writing projects below: