Kids Who Code: 2016 Code-a-thon

We had a minor setback this year as our scheduled Code-a-thon kickoff date ended up being a snow day due to a severe blizzard. This meant that we had to postpone our collaborative coding session with the OLCS Kindergartens until after our Christmas concerts. Although we were disappointed, we still had other Hour of Code sessions to lead! Once we were back at school, the grade 1s led coding sessions for the Grade 7/8 and Kindergarten students who were here during our no-bus day on the second day of the blizzard.  The weather settled down later in the week and we continued with our planned Hour of Code sessions at HES.  The grade 1s led sessions for all 30 of the grade 4 students and our 20 grade 2 neighbours.   It was awesome to see such great cooperation and collaboration between students!

We finally got to work with our OLCS Kindergarten buddies on the final day of school before Christmas break. Our class taught them how to code using Kodable and Tynker. Their class taught us to code with The Foos. It was a really fun way to spend our final morning of school before the holidays!  In total, the 22 grade 1s worked with over 70 other students to learn about coding!  I also led coding sessions for our HES Coding Club.  That means over 100 of us completed the Hour of Code this year!


Check out the video of the 2016 Kids Who Code Code-a-thon

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:

Kids Who Code: A Successful Code-a-thon

After much hard work and preparation, the Grade 1s successfully hosted the Kids Who Code Code-a-thon last week!  The 22 kids from our class ran 6 different coding stations, featuring coding activities from Kodable, The Foos, Lightbot, Tynker, Scratch Jr. and code.org. 

We had over 140 guests, including students from other classrooms and local dignitaries.  Guest classes in attendance included Mrs. Hrymak’s Grade 3 & 4 class from Rapid City School, Mrs. Caldwell’s Kindergarten Class from Miniota School, Mrs. Gorrell’s Grade 2 class from Shoal Lake School, Mr. Smith’s Grade 8 class from Hamiota Collegiate and the Grades 2,3 and 4 classes from Hamiota Elementary.  Local dignitaries in attendance included Arther-Virden M.L.A. Mr. Doyle Piwniuk, R.M. of Hamiota Mayor Mr. Larry Oakden, Park West School Division Superintendent Mr. Tim Mendel and Park West School Division Board Chair Darren Naherniak.  A group of awesome student teachers from the Brandon University Faculty of Education volunteered to help us keep the event running smoothly!

This unique, student-led event was planned to engage students in learning coding as part of the Hour of Code™ movement.  The Hour of Code™ is considered the largest learning event in history, with more than 100 million students worldwide already completing an hour of code.  This global event is designed to spark interest in computer science since many computer science jobs go unfilled and few schools teach computer science.  I was very proud of what great coding teachers my students were for this special event - they helped so many others to learn more about coding!  Great job grade 1s!

 

2015 Kids Who Code: The Code-a-thon Returns!

We live in a world surrounded by technology and we know that students will need to know how to effectively use technology to succeed in their futures.  And it’s more than just a need to use technology, it’s a need to create with technology and understand how technology works.  However, only a tiny fraction of people are learning computer science.   

That’s why my class is joining the largest learning event in history: The Hour ofCode!  Hour of Code takes place during Computer Science Education Week (December 7-13th).   More than 100 million students worldwide have already tried an Hour of Code and we are excited to see that number grow.  We are putting our own twist on Hour of Code again this year.  The Grade 1s in my class are very excited to host our 2015 Kids Who Code Code-a-thon! This exciting, student-led event will take place at our school on Friday, December 11.  

The Kids Who Code Code-a-thon idea was born last year while I was working with fellow educator Mrs. Devon Caldwell.  We decided that planning a coding event with a project based learning approach would be a great way for our students to start coding.  Students are in charge of planning the event, including making the guest list, sending invitations, preparing coding activities for our guests and planning the refreshments. 

Check out the 2014 Kids Who Code Code-a-thon video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVr9tSJNyhk

Read more about coding in our classroom in these posts: http://mrsobachsclass.blogspot.ca/search/label/%23kidswhocode

Use the Kids Who Code Code-a-thon Tip Sheet to plan your own Code-a-thon event:  

Kids Who Code: Preparing for our Code-a-thon

Our preparation for the Code-a-thon has focused on becoming coding experts so we can help others during the event.  Students submitted their top choices for coding tools they'd like to focus on and from there we created teams to "specialize" in each coding tool.  Students were in charge of exploring the app and becoming familiar with how to code using the specific tool.  Each team also created a set of instructions with text and screenshots.  I'm really proud of my students' work and I wanted to share their instructions for each coding tool in case other classes find them helpful.  Click here to see our instructions for Kodable, Tynker, Hopscotch, Code Monkey, Lightbot, Scratch Jr and Daisy the Dinosaur!


We are so excited for our Code-a-thon at Oak Lake Community School tomorrow!  It's going to be a great learning experience!