Programming Progression

This term Years 5 and 6 are beginning to move from the programming environments that let them code using visual drag-and-drop blocks (e.g. Scratch, Tynker and Hopscotch) to typing their code as text.

I think they made a fabulous start.  As we know, computers are stupid and do exactly what we tell them to do.  When you make a mistake typing code or use upper and lower case letters incorrectly, computers are not as forgiving as sometimes a teacher might be or ‘know what you mean’!

The children were designing algorithms that would make Robomind draw their initials.  Some had trickier initials than others but everyone managed to move on to coding them with text.  We then uploaded some to the class’ seesaw digital portfolio.

Next time, we’ll be programming Robomind to find and collect beacons using conditional statements (if..then..else).