Any experience running code club for 7-11 year olds

[Steven Mortimer]

Hi all,

I am in the process of setting up a code club at the moment and it looks like the school would prefer I ran the club for all KS2, age 7-11. Code club`s age range is 9-11 and I am guessing that, especially the later Python projects, that 7-9 year old's are going to find that hard work.

Does anyone have any experience of the projects with 7-11 year old's?

Thanks

Steve

[mans048]

Hi Steve

7 year olds are hard to keep focused at the best of times. Saying that there are plenty of resources available within the simple scratch range to keep things challenging and interesting. Even if they are downloading a scratch game from the main website and modifying the sprites it will give them good exposure to some coding skills.

Steve

[Chris Kimpton]

Hi

I believe we've had a few as young as that in our scratch classes.  The ability varies greatly between children - some of the older children struggle to focus on scratch too.  

Recently found the code.org lessons - they might be a way to encourage those who struggle with scratch. 

https://studio.code.org/

The lessons are scratch-like but very focussed, eg use a few script blocks and it encourages you the right things to do. Planning to try this with the stragglers this year. Might help them grok things and thus understand scratch better 

Cheers

Chris

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[Zoe Deeley]

grok ... that's a term I haven't heard in a very long time.... thanks for bringing back some nice memories Chris and some good ideas for the strugglers.

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[Steven Mortimer]

Thanks all, Thanks for the replies.

I helped run a coding club (not codeclub.org) with the same teachers last term for reception and year 1 children (4-6). I honestly thought it was going to be a disaster, but we used the code.org lessons and all of the children did really well. We also did some bee bot obstacle courses and races.

This time, the numbers are confirmed with most of the children from year 4 (8-9). There is 1 from year 3. So not quiet the age range that codeclub is aimed at, but I think we can give the scratch lessons a go and see what happens, with the code.org as the backup.

[Doug Stewart]

Hi Steve

I set up my Code Club about a year and a half ago, Started off initially with year 5 and 6 with one boy from year 4 who was keen to join.  Then over time we let in more year 4 and then some year 3.  This year because numbers were getting quite high at the end of last year I decided to restrict it to years 4 to 6. So at the moment I've got 8 from year 4, 8 from year 5 and 2 from year 6.

I actually find it is easier to keep the younger newer members focussed on the more proscriptive Scratch projects. They tend to stay "on script" more. Being able to use Scratch 1.4 helps them focus more whilst Scratch 2.0 online makes it easier for them to get side tracked by other peoples projects (i.e. play games!).  But a lot of the projects are designed for Scratch 2. The older children that have already done a lot of the Scratch projects can get bored so I find I have to look for challenges to interest them. The other day I got three of the doing some Python tutorials on Code Academy.  Felt good getting them writing "real code" :-)

The other big challenge with a mixed group, especially if some have been with the club for a while, is that you end up with the children doing a wide variety of things which is "interesting" if you are doing it on your own..  But it's fun!

Doug

[Steven Mortimer]

Thanks Doug,

We have just completed week 2 now and, apart from keeping the children on script, its going reasonably well. There are a couple year 3 that are flying ahead of the older ones.

The first week we walked thru the lesson together on the projector which went really well. Last week we tried the more traditional introduction and follow the worksheet. Most didn't follow the worksheet, but we can work on that :)

Overall however its going well.

Steve