Did you know that it is National Coding Week? A week for learning new digital skills and sharing stories to inspire and motivate.
Therefore, it seemed the perfect opportunity to share the experience of our boys in the Prep School, who jump at the myriad of opportunities to learn digital skills. For example, when we joined boys from Y4 – Y7 at Coding Club at lunchtime on Thursday, the boys were busy creating code in a fun Angry Birds game. Almost without knowing, the boys were learning the basic concepts of coding using visual blocks that can be dragged and dropped into place before snapping together like pieces of a puzzle.
With plenty of encouragement from Mrs Dale, a selection of on-screen digital heroes, including Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerburg, NBA’ Chris Bosh and most importantly, each other, the boys were enjoying and being exposed to key computational thinking skills while creating code by breaking down the challenge at hand into bite-size chunks (decomposition) and thinking each through logically.
Mrs Dale told us, “I love the skills that the boys learn through coding. It teaches them persistence, ignites their curiosity, and is also great for teamwork; all of which are integral to the school’s Futures Skills curriculum. While boys can code independently and at their own pace, we typically see the opposite: collaboration. More often than not, the boys work together to solve problems and support each other.”
The school’s Coding Club is open to all boys from Y4 to Y8, and all are welcome to give it a go during Coding Week. As Mrs Dale explains, “It is easy to get caught up in the technology, but at its core coding is simply communication and problem-solving. Not to mention great fun and highly rewarding!”
We think coding is brilliant and pretty much a superpower!