Hour of Code in Elementary

This week my students will be participating in the Hour of Code. Hour of Code is a global movement reaching tens of millions of students in 180+ countries. This blog post will teach you more about it and show you the three platforms we will be using to participate!

My first grade students actually have these apps in their 1:1 iPads year round. They love to open them when then have some free time or during recess. Due to our busy schedule though, we do not get to have very much dedicated time to work in them. Hour of Code week makes that a priority though.

Students across the world will be participating. It is encouraged to have your students practice code for one hour. This does not have to be consecutive. If you visit the website you can be led to lesson plans, web based coding platforms (you DO NOT need an iPad!) and watch tutorials. You can even create a teacher account where you can watch your students progress. This is not just restricted to first grade. They have resources on the website through high school.

Hour of Code is self guided once you get your kids on an app or a website. Below are the three apps that my students will choose from this week!

I have been using Tynker to have my students practice coding for three years now. It has always been my favorite platform. It is also web-based, but we will be using the app. You can have your kids sign in to an account, or they can just play. If you go to "create" you can pick a variety of coding projects to work on. I will be having my students mainly work on Candy Quest. The projects are very guided and make it easy for the beginning coder. Download the app here to play around and see what your students would benefit from the most! 

ScratchJr is one app that my students gravitate towards. It is based off of making adventures with the main character, the cat! I find it less guided than Tynker and has a lot more freedom with what you would like to create. It is more difficult to get started on, but my students seemed to have no trouble! You can start a new project on your own, or go to a saved one. I think this app is better for students who have had some exposure to coding. You can check it out here.

Kodable is a new app to my students and I. I will be introducing it this week. From what I can tell, it looks like it works a lot like Tynker. You create a class and your students can log on using the class code. From there, it is self-guided with a lot of prompts for the user. The app looks great for the beginner coder and forces the user to start with the very basics of coding. To learn more about it click here!

After your students have completed their Hour of Code, you can print out a finisher's certificate for them here!

Having your students participate in the Hour of Code exposes them to the growing world of computer science. Whether they choose a career as a computer science engineer or not, indefinitely they will use these tools as some point in their future. Take an easy step to to support them in their learning and participate in the Hour of Code!

PSST!! Want to learn EVEN MORE ways to easily implement iPads in your classroom?! Just click here (or the picture below) to sign up for my FREE five day email course! I will walk you through everything I've done to easily implement iPads in my own classroom!