For a total of 45 minutes, my students sat mesmerized by the computer. It was SILENT in the room as the students navigated the games on the screen, building code all the while.
As the kids get better, the games get harder. There are many different skill levels, many different grade levels, and many different themes to work with. All of these are sprinkled with videos of real life tech gurus talking about how they use code and what coding in a computer actually means. People like the creators of Instagram and Facebook all are speaking on the made for student videos.
My students really, really loved this. Many of them went home and continued coding on the site. You can sign your students up and give them a login, but you don't have to. The kids can go to the site and get coding right away.
I posted about this on my Facebook page last week and the response from others doing this was overwhelming. So many of you have had success with the Hour of Code. If you are thinking about it, I would highly recommend it...as would many of our teaching colleagues out there (as evidenced from the thread!)
Have you checked it out? What is your experience?
I did this activity with my fourth graders last year and had the same results: they loved it. I wasn't able to reserve the computer lab this year. I may have them do the lesson at another time.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds awesome! Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteI did this with seventh graders this year for the first time and I had the same experience that you did! They were totally into it! We'll do it again!
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