Quality free computing resources part 1: Code club and hour of code

This year I started running Code Club for year 5 children. We have access to PCs and ipads and will use both, as well as some hardware to use in the future.

My 'code clubbers' are also going to blog about their journey as a kind of online journal. That's what blogging is all about! They have been an enthusiastic bunch who have dived right in to what ever I have shown them. So here's how I've run it so far: I share a link, I give a clue (sometimes) and I leave them to it! It's all about their computational thinking and I'm not going to spoil that process by spoon feeding too much.

I had signed up to hour of code a while ago so that I was familiar with the resources and had used the Frozen hour of code with my year 2 class. It went down very well. I used the same with the year 5s, knowing that they would go beyond the highest level that my year 2s got to (12). The children are very motivated by the certificates at the end. We have since used Flappy Birds, Tynker and Scratch on both the iPad and PC. 

The thing about the Hour of Code is that it's all there ready for you to use. There are tutorials and each puzzle comes with hints and/or clues. It really has been well thought out as it scaffolds children's learning beautifully. My year 5 code clubbers will be able to help others in class when needed, though I think most will be able to manage without their support.

Tynker was very popular because you were able to build your own characters before starting each puzzle and Frozen, because who hasn't seen the film?! Within Tynker there are a range of different games to try and some are easy enough for my year 2 class. So, enough of reading my post - get onto code.org and get playing yourself!