Code Club at Caldecott Primary School Abingdon
Posted by: Tim Round 38 weeks 4 days ago
On Wednesday 19th, I held my first Code Club meeting for years 5 and 6 at Caldecott Primary School.
Code Club is part of a nationwide network of volunteer-led after school coding clubs for children aged 9-11, with the aim of giving every child in the UK a chance to learn to program. http://codeclub.org.uk/
12 children attended, 9 of which were girls (probably because my daughter had told all her friends). Hopefully more children will attend next week, once they find out how fun it is.
The first meeting didn't quite go as planned because the necessary software wasn't installed, but I manged to keep the children interested for the hour. I talked about Code Club and gave them a demostration of the Scratch programming language and what they are able to do with it, and then let them try games created by other children on the Scratch website.
Next week, fingers crossed, the children can actually start coding.
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Hi Tim
Thanks for your post. I too started a Code Club session last week at St Mary's primary school near Boston. I had a similar experience to you; 9 enthusiastic children but no software installed. I think my link teacher has difficulty finding the time to respond to my emails and so I'm not sure if he's managed to install SCRATCH yet.
Posted by: Paul Carter 38 weeks agoI've managed to use a social networking site for schools called, Edmodo.com that has allowed me to provide 'virtual' tuition to the children. Consequently some have made and uploaded programs to the SCRATCH website. One boy has completed all of the Level 1 assignments. I think the site will prove useful for allowing the keen ones to get on at their own pace and not get frustrated by only having a one hour session per week.
Have a look at Edmodo if you are interested and let me know what you think.
Regards
Paul