Indian Creek Celebrates National Computer Science Education Week

Indian Creek Lower School students and teachers celebrated National Computer Science Education (NCSE) Week this week by enjoying some extra-fun coding challenges. NCSE week is an annual program dedicated to inspiring students to take interest in computer science. The group challenges schools to teach one hour of coding into their curriculum during this week. While ICS students enjoy regular Coding classes in their weekly schedules, Pre-K through sixth grade teachers enjoyed collaborating to create projects that would enhance the experience for this event.

One project was based on the story "Mae Among the Stars." Students listened to a story about space travel and were then challenged to code an Ozobot spaceship to launch from Earth and orbit the moon. The students tapped into their programming knowledge to create a pathway for the Ozobot to travel from Earth to the Moon. Next, they were challenged to add different code to make the spaceship travel at different speeds and in different ways.

First grade students read the story "The Christmas Cobwebs," in which a family loses their holiday ornaments in a fire and spiders come to make them new ornaments. The class then used their 3D pens to spin their own cobweb ornaments like the heroes of the story

"Journey" was another project, where students listened to a story and then created their own imaginative journeys by coding the Bluebots to enact their plans. Students first 
created three make-believe locations on index cards and placed the make-believe locations on a coding grid. The students then coded the Bluebot to go on the journey, while using yellow direction cards to record their code. Many students increased the complexity of this challenge, by creating more fantastical locations to their maps and creating more intricate codes.
 
Students also took a fun ride through a Roller Coaster activity, using Scratch Jr. to draw and create the track for a roller coaster. Students also created individual roller coaster cars and coded the cars to travel through the roller coaster track. Many students even created and coded more than one roller coaster car!

Fourth grade used Scratch, Jr. to code a video of a scene from the novel that they are reading in Literature class.  Instead of completing a written response, the fourth grade students each coded a video that demonstrated a reading comprehension question.

Pre-K through sixth grade students enjoyed some fun projects in honor of National Computer Science Education week. Stay tuned to next week's newsletter for some exciting Technology news from the Upper School.
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Indian Creek school is a co-educational, college preparatory independent school, located in Crownsville, Maryland.  Students in Pre-K3 through grade 12 receive a vibrant educational experience based on excellent academics steeped in strong student-teacher connections.