

The morning of our visit there were about 20 Grade-5 children (50% girls). Bruce told us that, this year, there were no specific prerequisites for signing up for Code Club. It was purely based on whether the child was interested in learning to code. This was different to the year before, when they offered Code Club as an enrichment program for their top math students. Most of them, now Grade 6 students, were still doing Club and currently working on a coding assignment in another room.

The Grade 5 children were working with program called ‘Scratch’. Scratch is a visual programming
(or block design1) language developed by MIT and currently one of
the, if not the most, popular programming language for children. Just like
LOGO, it is a procedural language: it is telling the computer what to do step
by step and how to perform from the first piece of code to the second piece of
code. Scratch provides its users with heaps of prepared coding ‘blocks’,
but it also allows for custom solutions. We noticed that, independent of given
exercise, some children were making their own programs, designing their own
backgrounds (‘Stages’) and drawing their own characters (‘Sprites’).
After
about 45 minutes of coding the school bell rang and the children went out to
the playground for a break before the start of school. This gave us the
opportunity to ask Bruce and his volunteers some more questions, until they
also had to leave for work and other commitments.
We would like to thank Bruce, the other Code Club volunteers
and the LEPS Code Club students for allowing us to observe them in action and
for teaching us about Scratch and telling us about their experiences with Code
Club. It is clear that the LEPS Code Club students are getting a great
introduction to coding. Since all the coding activities in Scratch are
performed on an online platform, children also have the opportunity to continue
their projects at home.
References
1Dwyer, H., Hill, C., Hansen, A., Iveland, A.,
Franklin, D. & Harlow (2015). Fourth grade students reading-block based
programs: Predictions, Visual cues, and affordances. Proceedings of the eleventh annual International Conference on
International Computing Education Research, 111-119. ACM: New York.