By Mike Hutchens, UC Schools Communications Director
Union City, Tenn.–The seeds for Union City High School’s fast-growing coding classes are being planted at UC Elementary.
Students in kindergarten as well as first- and second- graders in Sherri Moore’s classes are learning the very-basic steps of coding as part of the UCES enrichment program.
Those students are initiated in the learning process by becoming familiar with the coding language, including recognizing vocabulary words and understanding their meaning.
Once this is mastered, they use unplugged activities — lessons that don’t require the use of electronics or robots — to test their knowledge.
Among the students’ favorite activity is a practice referred to as “Hop Scotch Coding.”
Students are given cards with instructions — hop, clap, kick, spin, etc. — along with arrow cards that indicate direction. Once they have created a “code,” they walk through it and perform each task, just as a robot would do.
While doing so, students look for problems – or debugging, as it’s called in the coding world. After students have debugged and are satisfied with their code, they rotate to another group’s code and perform their task — again looking for glitches the other group might have missed.
After students demonstrate a basic understanding of coding, they are ready to code the real robots, Dash and Dot.
“The students absolutely love to code!” Moore said. “They truly embrace today’s technology and are excited about learning how it works.”