Hello all! I am hoping you can point me in the right direction. I used Code.org last year as part of the Hour of Code, but haven’t used it beyond that.
This year, I want to incorporate it more into my classroom. I am a 5th Grade STEM teacher.
I have set up my class, but I’m not sure where to go from there. Is there a way to assign a path for them to follow? If so, how? Or do they randomly pick and choose? I guess I want them to grow as programmers, but not sure how to utilize the lessons to build a curriculum.
I don’t see this being an every day thing in my class room, but perhaps an hour or so spread over 2-3 days a week. I just want to expose them to this world.
I’m trying right now how to do the same thing. I’ve added kids, but now what? Where do I direct them? If you’ve got this figured out, please let me know!
I went to a really awesome, free workshop through code.org this summer and received a teacher manual (super helpful!!) that I’ve been using. If you don’t have it though, you can still have your students go on a specific pathway. I’m starting my fifth graders on “Course 1” (pathway meant for non-reading youngsters) to make sure they all have basic skills; once they quickly go through the puzzles for those, they’ll move onto “Course 2” which will be more their speed. There are online teaching resources for these courses so you can do planning and prep for what are called “unplugged” lessons (without-computer opportunities for your young computer scientists to practice collaboration and communication), but to just get them started you could have them go to “course 1.” I hope that’s helpful; yay for fifth grade computer science!!