They had a blast, and the range of emotions experienced by these kids was fantastic...they were excited, frustrated, challenged, surprised, determined....and not one of them gave up! All of my students finished and got the certificate to prove it!!
They offered help, accepted help and did not give up!!
After completion they went to their Kidblog pages and reflected on the experience....you can view those blog posts here: Mrs. Rahn's Kidblog page
I think their words say it all:
"I’ve just completed The Hour of
Code. At first I enjoyed it and didn’t have to think much about what I
was doing. It was very fun but then as I got to the end it got difficult
and hard. It required lots of thinking and time. Finally I had
finished. I had written 116 lines of code and finished all the 20 levels
of code. I was amazed at myself, I thought I would’ve never finished,
but I did. I got a certificate that said I had successfully completed
“The Hour of Code."
"My hour of code was very challenging but I got through it and beat the
challenge. I exited out to fast so I did not see how many hour of codes I
got. But I know I didn’t do so well until a friend showed me on 10/20
then after that I did all by myslef and I did great. I liked this
activity today. I really do believe that computers are the next
generation to life. They really are amazing, they have thousands and
thousands of activites on the internet."
"I thought The Hour of Code would be hard! No way, not with my
smart brain! The Hour of Code was pretty hard, but admit it, it wasn’t
that bad. It was fun and a good experience!"
"You can call me clutch because I just finished the hour of code. It was
not that hard, but it was a little challenging and frustrating, but I
got through it and completed it. It was fun and thought provoking which I
like. It also looked very simple to do, but it was harder than I thought
it would have been. So just to say I completed it felt good. Soo you
can call me clutch."
"I wrote 109 lines of code, it was so much fun... kinda. At first i didn't
want to do it because it sounded dumb and hard, but it was not that hard and
really fun! I cant wait to do lines of code again! Have you ever done
lines of code? I really want to do it again i loved it so much!!!"
"I loved the hour of code. It was really hard but I completed it
with 154 lines. Some of them were harder than the others. If you did it
how many lines did you get?I was suprised how hard it was. I thought it
was going to be really easy but it was not. I really liked it. I hope I
can do it again."
"Right before I posted this post, I did "an hour of code" or something,
and programed a character to travel to the goal 20 TIMES IN A ROW! when I
first started I was like "oh... well I'm gonna fail" then a while after
I was like "you're kidding me, this is like playing a video game (I'm
pretty good at video games)"
I teach English classes full of reading and writing activities - and today we explored computer programming and coding. The kids were reading, using higher level thinking skills, reflecting on their decisions, analyzing the next move, predicting what might happen, drawing conclusions, making inferences, determining cause and effect relationships....sounds like English class to me!
And then they reflected on the experience through writing - on their blogs - for an authentic audience!
Hour of Code in Mrs. Rahn's class. Higher order thinking skills...here we come! pic.twitter.com/vUdHnpZ59F
— Blue Ridge MS (@BRMSbulldogs) December 12, 2013
I'm impressed. Bravo!
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