How to Set Up Extracurricular Coding Opportunities
“Let the children 'remix' what they have been working on in class”
- by Teachwire
We have been working with the primary computing curriculum for nearly five years now – time enough for teachers and schools to get to grips with it, and perhaps time enough for us to realise just how useful the coding element can be across different subjects areas.
Despite being pretty controversial at first, it now feels like coding has been part of the curriculum ‘furniture’ forever, so what are the next steps?
For me, it has always been about extending the experiences of the children – giving them opportunities to learn and experiment with their learning; letting those children who enjoy and excel at it to ‘fly’ with it.
The busy curriculum means that for many schools, extra-curricular clubs are a good next step. This also helps support those pupils who don’t have ready access to computers and/or the internet at home.
After-school and lunchtime clubs have always been a double edged sword for primary schools. You can ask for a contribution to costs from parents, but it won’t usually cover any staff costs, so teachers are volunteering their time.
With this in mind, you want to make sure any after-school coding club actually delivers experiences that can’t be done in the classroom, are easy to manage and don’t create much extra work for the people leading them.
Luckily, coding and computing clubs can be all of those things.
Our after-school code club is one of the busiest in the school. Each year the new Y3s clamour to find out when it will start up, while our Y6s can’t wait to get started on the extra activities and responsibilities they can now take part in.
Levelled challenges
The obvious contender for an after-school club involves using resources from Code Club.
This excellent initiative places volunteers in schools to run free extra-curricular opportunities using resources schools already know about, such as the website Scratch.
When I worked in east London five years ago, we were tripping over volunteers.
Now I’m in rural Cumbria it’s not so easy, but we manage.
Currently I lead the club, which runs through levelled challenges for the children, ultimately allowing them to create fun games that they are already familiar with, such as racing, point scoring and simple tennis type games.
Code Club is great because the instructions provided are simple to follow.
It can all be done in Scratch, which is a free program. The idea behind an after-school club should be to go beyond the curriculum.
Let the children ‘remix’ what they have been working on in class, or let children tinker with some of the examples already in Scratch.
For example, open the ‘Dance Party’ starter project at scratch.mit.edu/starter_projects and click on ‘See inside’ to allow the children to add more characters and change the speed, colours and dance moves.
This way, if the teacher (or volunteer) is not up-to-date with how to use the program it doesn’t really matter.
For those children who can go beyond that, there are resources for HTML and even Python, a language many pupils will work in at secondary school.
There are many resources for Scratch online. The trick is to find activities that can produce results pretty quickly (like an animation), but can then be tinkered with and built on.
Don’t be afraid to supply something already done and let the children put their own stamp on it. Take a look at the videos my students created to welcome astronaut Tim Peake home here.
Other ways we have used after-school clubs at my school is to give a specific challenge to pupils.
After mastering the basics of BBC micro:bits, we set the children the task of making a Lego creation involving them.
Cue the children creating a fortune teller (with the micro:bits responding with ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘ask again’ when shook), emergency vehicles (where the micro:bit was a flashing light) and road safety signs. The micro:bit is great for after-school clubs because it is so quick and easy to get results.
The tutorials and challenges at microbit.co.uk/blocks/lessons will have children creating a simple program that responds to a shake or push of a button.
Try starting with the ‘Beautiful image’ or ‘Smiley’ lessons. Again, this is perfect for volunteers. As it is a ‘physical’ bit of coding, it feels different to on-screen activities.
micro:bits are available to buy now but are not the only cheap physical computing peripherals out there. It is also worth investigating the Raspberry Pi and Code Bug as well.
Let them lead
Our older children (who are our ‘digital leaders’) also run a lunchtime ‘mini code club’. These shorter session activities are based around a particular skill.
For example, they use activities from code.org to give the younger children a flavour of coding, or they create and animate a sprite in Scratch using only the ‘move’ and ‘turn’ commands.
Limiting the commands used has a canny way of allowing the children to be even more creative.
These kinds of clubs are my favourite as the children love running them and the younger pupils are always so impressed with what they can do – there’s lots of ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs!’
We once spent a session developing ideas for using Bee-Bots (robots that can be programmed via buttons on the device itself); sessions which the older children then led with the teachers of the younger pupils.
I explained that we wanted the younger children to understand the ‘repeat’ function, then challenged the older children to create an activity that would do just this. This was a great way to develop lots of ‘soft skills’ such as teamwork, problem solving and speaking and listening, as well as giving confidence in coding to all involved.
Of course, after-school clubs don’t always need to be whizzy and provide lots of new experiences. Build on what you use in school. The extra time an after-school club can give is perfect for those children who enjoy the challenge but want to explore.
Whatever you use in school can be extended and provided for challenges.
How to run a brilliant code club
- Don’t create too much work for yourself – make use of the resources available (such as Microbit, Code Club and Scratch) and see what you have in school.
- Keep it simple. Select challenges that can be completed in one session then debugged and remixed in the next.
- Give the children ownership. I often choose a ‘playtester’ pupil each session who the children go to before telling me their work is finished. The playtester plays the game or tests the work, specifically looking for bugs. This encourages the children to tweak and fix problems themselves.
- Involve the children’s parents – this is always a hit!
Rebecca Stacey is headteacher at Castle Carrock Primary in Brampton, Cumbria. Find her at digitalclassrooms.co.uk and follow her on Twitter at @bekblayton.
