School-Wide Challenge Ideas

CS Discoveries Resources, Tools, Differentiation
1

Hello!

I apologize if this has been asked already, but I am looking for ideas for conducting a school-wide Code.org challenge this next school year. Students get really excited for the Hour of Code each year but I want to keep that excitement going all year long.

I was thinking about having students in each grade level challenge each other. That way kindergarten students will be competing with other kindergarteners, sixth-grade students will be competing with other sixth graders, etc. I haven’t decided on completing levels or lines of code. Does anyone have any success (or even failures) of where to start? Thanks in advance for all of your help!

2

I am so new to this coding. My middle school students are almost done with all the lesson. What do I teach next? Please help

3

@rajibains08,

Welcome to the forum and to coding! We’d love to help, but may need a little more information. Which lesson(s) have you taught? How much time do you have, etc? There is a lot available, but it would be helpful to know what you’ve already used and what your goals are, etc.

If you’re looking for activities, there is everything from one hour activities to full year courses.

Mike

4

Thank you so much for getting back to me. I am so lost…I had no training and I came into this school in November. Students have been working on Express courses and they are almost done with all the lesson and I don’t know what else to teach them. Please help me.

Thanks

5

@rajibains08,

I’m going to assume you are teaching in the middle school grades, as you posted in the CS Discoveries forum, however, if not, we can definitely help you if you are teaching more Elementary or in HS. The Express course starts mid-elementary and can teach concepts to students of all grades, but for middle school, the basic course is CS Discoveries which is a year-long 6 unit course that many teachers break up into semesters or even teach individual units depending on what best fits their school, time frame and curriculum needs.

You can find the lesson plans and curriculum for that course here: https://curriculum.code.org/csd-19/

If your students have already done some of the express activities and coursework, the format of this course may be a little different as SOME of the units (unit 1, unit 4) are mostly unplugged and are designed to be taught more in a classroom setting and less “work at your own pace”. They are great units, but they get your students problem solving and learning how computers think before actually asking them to code. There are also lessons mixed in on digital literacy and online safety and etiquette which I think are invaluable.

Unit 2 is Web Development and Unit 3 is Game development (probably most similar to the Express course, however it goes into more depth by the time they finish it and they aren’t just completing challenges, but rather creating their own animations and games).

If you are planning on going from now until the end of the year, you may want to look over the curriculum and decide where to start. I may suggest doing some of unit 1, starting unit 2 and finishing the year with at least the first half of unit 3. You could also skip unit 2 completely and do units 1 & 3, although I find web development to be a good one for students to learn.

Then, you may want to see if there will be a summer training course near you in the summer that will help you get an even better understanding of how the curriculum was designed and how it can best serve your students. (https://code.org/educate/professional-learning). I started teaching this course before I was trained and I know others who teach it without being trained, but the training is a great help, especially if you are new to coding. However, even if you just start with the lesson plans, you should be able to at least get going and work through it at the same time as the students and there is a lot of support available (the forum here, answer keys, etc.) And, even though the curriculum is fully developed and has a lot of support and resources, it is free, which is a big plus.

There are similar courses and trainings for Elementary and HS, so if CS Discoveries isn’t the best fit, you can find a course that will be. Let us know how we can help you get started.

Mike

1 Like
6

okay, I problem is that I came to this school in November, and students were already doing express course and now they almost done with all the lessons and I don’t know what to teach them. Where exactly is web designing in the program? I was told to just do the lesson, had no training and fairly new to coding. I feel lost.

I appreciate your sending me links.The training is not till june, but I need something to teach the students. Do you know any good website designing sites, which are free?

thanks

7

The link to the lesson plans above has everything you need to teach the course including the web development lessons. And it is free.

Each lesson has a detailed lesson plan and you can create a classroom to assign your students to where they can find all they need to do the lessons. You can use all of it now, even before the trainings.

After you click on it, there should be a link to a document on how to get started. Let me know if you cant find it.

Mike

1 Like
9

Thank you Michael, I am so grateful for our help. Will check it out soon.

have a great day.

Raji