By: Ariel Hecker
Dickinson High School Student
In Hour of Code, we taught elementary students how to code on Scratch.com. Coding is when you tell the computer to do something, how to do it, and the computer does it. We created a maze game with 4th and 5th graders at Lincoln Elementary School. We first created our maze
by drawing black lines on our background. Then we coded our computer to move our character up when the up arrow was pressed, down when the down arrow was pressed, left when the left arrow was pressed, and right when the right arrow was pressed. After that, we made it so when the character either touched the black lines or the edge of the background, the character would go back to where it started. The maze was very fun to teach, and the students were having fun while learning to code.
We also went to Berg Elementary School and we taught 2nd graders how to build a farm and make the animals do fun tricks. We made a horse jump and a dragon do a flip on Scratch Jr. We started by putting up a background that looked like a farm. Then, we coded a horse on
the screen and made the horse jump by telling the computer to move the horse up 3 units and down 3 units when the start button was pressed. We also coded a dragon and made it do a flip.
We did that by telling it to go up 3 units, spin 360 degrees, and then go down 3 units. Towards the end of the hour, we let the students experiment with making their own code. One student made a scene where a rocket ship landed, and astronauts went up into space. We let them show some of their creations to the whole class, and the students loved this.
Hour of Code was very fun, and it introduced students to coding and understanding a little bit about how computers work. The students had a lot of fun, and we did as well.