Learning to code is akin to receiving the key to a world of opportunities. It’s not about zeros and ones, or math and science. It’s about solving problems kids didn’t think they could, in creative ways that feel good. It gives students the power to shape a world they’re becoming part of, for many the key to a brighter future than their current one.

The Ask a Tech Teacher crew has come up with a foundational list of tips for teaching coding. Read them. Share in comments what your secret techniques are:

6 Tips for Teaching Kids Coding

If you were around when the internet first came out, you may have seen how coding was a career for specialized professionals. These professionals needed to get a specialized degree, and they gained experience through building software. But today, coding has become more accessible, and everything online was made through coding, and today’s employers are looking for employees who can code. If you are preparing to teach kids how to code, there are a few things you should know.

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It’s no secret many parents are frustrated with public schools. Are kids learning to think or just to pass tests? Are they spending classroom time wisely or just doing what’s always been done? Are we developing lifelong learners or kids who can’t wait to graduate?

If this describes you, you’re not alone in your concerns, but there’s hope. Consider a pedagogy that transcends rote memorization and the stock drills often found in today’s classrooms, expects critical thinking that teaches how to learn anything — not just school subjects. It’s called a “Growth Mindset”. In an Edsurge article by Rupa Gupta, former Redesign Administrator at Burnett Middle School in San Jose, Calif., she summarized the issue like this:

“In a recent national survey, 97 percent of teachers agreed that all students can and should have a growth mindset, and that same number said fostering a growth mindset is an important part of a teacher’s job. Yet only 50 percent said they have adequate solutions and strategies to shift mindset.”

So nearly everyone agrees this type of cerebral approach is important to real learning but few know how to make it happen.

What is Growth Mindset?

Let me back up a moment and define “Growth Mindset” more clearly. Most people believe basic human qualities like intelligence and talent are fixed traits: nature supersedes nurture. Kids are born with the characteristics that will mold their future. They are good at math or they aren’t. They can throw a football well or not. As kids grow, they figure out what they can and can’t do and adjust learning and life as needed to these truths. They come to believe that understanding and adapting to this process equates to success.

In a Growth Mindset, people believe ability can be developed through dedication and hard work. The cerebral and physical traits they were born with are just the starting point. Students are responsible for setting the patterns and strategies that allow them to succeed, by evaluating what they can do at any given point and making a plan for learning everything else.

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To students, knowing how to ‘compare and contrast’ sounds academic, not real world, but we teachers know most of life is choosing between options. The better adults are at this, the more they thrive.

Common Core Standards recognize the importance of this skill by addressing it in over 29 Standards, at every grade level from Kindergarten through Twelfth Grade. Here’s a partial list:

Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take. (K-5 and 6-12 Reading Anchor Standards)

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Here are popular puzzles resources teachers are using to teach mouse skills, critical thinking, and more. There are a few for the upcoming St. Patrick’s Day:

1. Digipuzzles–great puzzles for geography, nature, and holidays
2. I’m a Puzzle–create your own puzzles
3. Jigsaw Explorer–make your own
4. Jigsaw Planet–create your own picture jigsaw
5. Jigsaw puzzles
6. Jigzone–puzzles
7. Jigsaw Puzzles–JS
8. Kindergarten puzzles
9. Puzzle—St. Pat’s Puzzle
10. Puzzle—drag-and-drop puzzle
11. Puzzle—St. Pat’s slide puzzle

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Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

In a perfect world, vocabulary is learned in context: The phrases and sentences around the unknown word define the meaning. If that isn’t sufficient, students use affixes — prefixes, suffixes, and roots — to decode meaning. But because the world isn’t always that pristine,  Dorothy Frayer and her colleagues at the University of West Virginia came up with a vocabulary teaching tool that has come to be known as “the Frayer Model”. Now used by thousands of educators, this approach to word study relies on analyzing words rather than memorizing definitions. Somewhat like Concept Circles, the Frayer Model uses a graphical organizer that asks students to describe words by much more than a memorized definition. They must:

• define the term
• describe essential characteristics
• provide examples
• provide non-examples

Because the Frayer Model digs deeply into understanding the word, it promotes critical thinking and a granular familiarity with unfamiliar vocabulary. It draws on a student’s prior knowledge to build connections among new concepts and creates a visual reference by which students learn to compare attributes and examples.

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Over the next week, I’ll share ideas that will get you ready for your Hour of Code. This includes (links are live on publication day):

1. An Overview of This Week
2. Long list of websites by grade
3. 10 Unusual Projects
4. 6 Unplugged Hour of Code Activities

This is a long list of online activities related to coding and programming. It is updated once a year so I apologize in advance for any dead links. At any time during the year, click to take you to the master list:

Program on computers, iPads, laptops–whatever works, whatever age. I’ll start this list with web-based options, by grade level and then continue with a mash-up:

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Set aside December 5-11th, 2022 for the hugely-popular Hour of code. This is a week of activities dedicated to inspiring kids to learn/love coding. This year:

1,536,702,210 will participate

180+ countries

44,941 events 

What is it

Hour of Code is a one-hour introduction to students on coding, programming, and why they should love it, designed to demystify that mystical geeky subject that confounds students and teachers alike and show that anyone can learn the basics to be a maker, a creator, and an innovator.

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Differentiating between reliable websites, books, information has always been a topic in classrooms. Kids tend to think if a site is at the top of the Google hit list, it is the most reliable. It requires teaching to explain why that isn’t true. What has increased in the last decade is the prevalence of ‘fake new’, what used to be called ‘yellow journalism’, where news is presented ina way that garners views and clicks rather than disseminates the truth.

Education Week tackles this issue as a teacher describes efforts to defeat fake news online. Here the article:

TikTok Is Feeding My Students Fake News About Ukraine. How Can Truth Win?

Students prefer images instead of written analysis of world events, which Chris Doyle, a teacher at a Connecticut school, describes as “TikTok over The New York Times.” Yet, Doyle writes in this blog post that imagery can be deceptive, fabricated and even outright propaganda, as Doyle works to debunk them, leading to concerns about the information students are consuming.

Read more…

Ask a Tech Teacher has quite a few articles and resources on this topic. Here are a few:

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Over the next week, I’ll share ideas that will get you ready for your Hour of Code. This includes (links won’t work until the articles are posted):

1. Hour of Code? Here’s why you should participate
2. Long list of websites by grade
3. 15 Unusual Projects
4. The Easiest No-coding Way to Build an Education App

This is a long list of online activities related to coding and programming. It is updated once a year so I apologize in advance for any dead links. At any time during the year, click to take you to the master list.

Program on computers, iPads, laptops–whatever works, whatever age. I’ll start this list with web-based options, by grade level and then continue with a mash-up:

Kindergarten

1st grade

2nd grade

3rd grade

4th grade

5th grade

MS

HS

Build an App

1. Apps Geyser
2. App Inventor–build Android apps on a smartphones; from MIT
3. Game Salad
4. Glide–create an app from a spreadsheet
5. Jotform App Builder
6. Metaverse–create apps using Metaverse’s AR platform
7. Thunkable

Coding Curriculum

1. C-STEM Studio–download to teach computers, science, technology, engineering and math with robotics
2. Code Academy
3. Coursera
4. Everyone Can Code–from Apple
5. Free Code Camp
6. Google Computer Science for High School–free workshops (with application) for K-12 teachers
7. Learn to Code (for free)
8. PluralSight
9. Ted-ED Think Like A Coder–a 10-episode cartoon-based series to teach kids about coding in a game format
10. Tree House

Hour of Code

Miscellaneous

1. Animatron–design and publish animated and interactive content that plays everywhere, from desktop computers to mobile devices.
2. Basics of Coding–from AT&T
3. BeeBop–based on the Beebop floor robot–free
4. BotLogic–great for Kindergarten and youngers
5. BrainPop coding games
6. Build a website–a guide
7. Cargo-Bot—logic iPad game
8. Cato’s Hike (K+)
9. Chrome Experiments–geeky experimentation with programming
10. Codea (Perfect for Intermediate+)
11. Code.org–learn to code; with teacher accounts, no student emails required (join with Join code)
12. Codespace–coding curriculum
13. Daisy the Dinosaur—intro to programming
14. Edabit–learn to code with interactive challenges
15. Foos–app or desktop; K-1
16. Grasshopper–coding app for beginners with lesson tutorials; intuitive
17. Hopscotch (for up to intermediate–more complicated that Kodable)
18. Hummingbird Robotics
19. I like programming video
20. Kodable–-great for K-2–learn to code before you can read
21. Kodu—game programming
22. KOOV–by Sony Education
23. Learn to code
24. LightBot Jr.–programming for six-year olds
25. Lightbot–solving puzzles with programming; MS
26. Minecraft coding mod
27. Move the Turtle–programming via iPad for middle school
28. Osmo Coding--a purchased game system to teach coding
29. Pencil Code
30. Pyonkee–free, a little glitchy
31. Robby Leonardi–programmer–a game played about programming in the style of Mario
32. Roboblockly–to teach coding and math, from UCDavis
33. ScratchJr--for ages 5-7
34. Stencyl–build games without coding with downloaded software
35. Stickman–draw a stick figure and the site animates it
36. Swift Playground–from Apple, includes lessons and challenges designed to teach kids to code
37. Symbaloo collection for coding
38. TED Talk on young programmers
39. Which Language Should You Learn to Code–an infographic of options

Robotics

1. C-STEM Studio
2. Cue–from Wonder Workshop
3. Dash and Dot — from Wonder Workshop–younger thinkers
4. Drones
5. Mebo
6. Robot Don
7. Sphero

Scratch

Click for an Hour of Code lesson plan bundle (K-8).

Click for Robotics 101 lesson plan.

Windows apps

1. CodeWriter 
2. HTML Programs

More on Hour of Code

6 Unplugged Activities for Hour of Code

Build Your Own Apps

Build Websites

Hour of Code–Is it the right choice?

Kid-created Games That Teach

Looking for a Class Robot? Try Robo Wunderkind

Minecraft Review

PrimoToys–unplugged programming for youngers

Root Robotics–Great Way to Extend Hour of Code

Scratch Jr.

Should Coding be a Part of the Modern School’s Curriculum?

Websites and Apps to Support Hour of Code

Why Should Students Learn Computer Science? A Teacher’s Perspective

Wonder Workshop’s Amazing Dash

@CSEdWeek #hourofcode #hoc #edtech

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

December 6-12th, 2021, Computer Science Education will host the Hour Of Code–a one-hour introduction to students on coding, programming, and why they should love it, designed to demystify “code” and show that anyone can learn the basics to be a maker, a creator, and an innovator. Coding is that mystical geeky subject that confounds students and teachers alike.  It feels like:

When it should feel like:

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