programming | Thinking Through My Lens

You might remember that I’ve been exploring computer programming (or coding) with my young students. You can go back here and here to see our early attempts. The basic idea is clear…you write code to make your electronic device do something. At first, ANY something was fun. And then we all learned to make a specific something (square and triangle).

Today we asked students to make a plan for their code and then carry it out. They drew a quick sketch (we reminded them to keep it simple and to use what they already knew about squares and triangles to get started) in their notebook and then move to Hopscotch on the iPad to carry it out.

I showed them how I had gone home and figured out how to write my very simple name with straight lines and angles similar to those we had used to make our squares and triangles.

What I’ve learned is that not all students take to coding equally…and that doesn’t surprise me. Some students find it hard…and they are at a loss of how to proceed. I encourage them to study what they have done before, but they need more of the one to one support of having someone sit and talk them through their choices. Others are quite persistent. This first grade boy worked and worked to draw this house. He struggled with the final side, and while it’s not quite straight…he was proud of his accomplishment!

Lots of girls liked my idea of drawing letters or writing their own name. This second grade girl figured out how to make several characters come together to make an “E” to represent her name.

And others risked creating something more complex. This third grader managed to create a picture along with some words of a story. I got him to take this screen shot for me, but after that he was still adjusting his code and working to make it look just the way he wanted.

I love the way that programming allows students to work at their own edge…and teach each other as they figure out something new. We ran short of time today, but I know that I want to give students time to share how they made their designs with each other (and me).

Using Hopscotch makes me realize just how much more I need to know about angles and rotation in order to get past the basics of squares and triangles! I just figured out how to make a circle as I was waiting for a dinner meeting tonight!

Have you tried Hopscotch or another basic programming tool? What do you suggest as next steps for my students?

It’s Halloween…the perfect day to continue our adventures in coding with our first, second and third grade students!

And thanks to Mark, our ed tech guy, the kids had the advantage of having someone other than their regular teachers reinforce their initial learning and suggest some next steps.

We returned to Beebot today. Our students love this friendly bee that responds to their fingertip commands. And it becomes the perfect vehicle (pun intended) for reminding them that programmers have an idea in mind for their code. Today’s challenge: can we make Beebot travel in a square and return to where he began? (The answer was yes!)

And then we transitioned to Hopscotch. And our students were in for a treat! Hopscotch characters were dressed for Halloween today…a special Halloween update. (The room was electric as the students discovered this new edition on their iPads!)

Mark guided the students as they matched the commands they used on Beebot to the blocks on Hopscotch. And they carefully coded their first character to make a square.

As you might expect, there were a few glitches…a perfect opportunity to do some “debugging.” And then we all tackled making a triangle.

That was a bit harder. And some students figured out if you used the repeat block, some interesting triangle designs resulted! And here is the basic square and triangle we aimed to code for today.

I hope students take away the value of being able to make the characters do what they want them to do. This planning is not to get in the way of “happy accidents” but instead to help students do more than move blocks and push play randomly. I know that many of our students can hardly wait to create some more triangle designs. Our next invitation might be, what picture can you make with triangles and squares?

The Halloween costumes will go away the next time we update the app…but I hope the lessons learned on Halloween will remain…and become a platform for continued learning. I know I learned a lot today and am more interested in programming than I was before! I can’t wait to figure out what my students (and I) will do next!