Coding can seem scary for educators that are not familiar with it, but do not let that keep you from it! Coding is an innovative topic that is going to get bigger and bigger and are students need to be able to do it. When coding in the classroom it is important to just let your students explore and encourage failure. Let them know that it's okay to fail and it is apart of the learning process. It is also important to know that coding is not limited to math and science! A coding activity that I had never heard of using and would love to use in my future classroom (if in a lower grade) are the Bee Bots. Bee Bots are used in lower elementary classrooms for many different activities. They can be used for counting, adding, subtracting, colors, shapes, and even mapping. An activity I had never thought to use coding for retelling. The Bee Bots can be used to code and retell a story. The video below is an example of the Bee Bots being used to retell a story.
Coding can also and should be used in upper elementary grades as well. Students could demonstrate an eclipse (HOW COOL?!) They could use Ozobots for Literacy. For example, they could use the ozobot to create a story. These bots are not cheap, so if your school does not provide the resources you may need to look for other ways to get your students coding. There are many inexpensive coding activities on Teachers Pay Teachers that do not require any kind of robot. This may be good to use for beginner teachers and coders. You can find the coding charts and use them for reading. This is an easy way to implement coding when technology is not available. Something that I had not thought of was using the Binary Code to practice coding skills! There are many cheap and inexpensive ways to incorporate coding into your everyday classroom. Coding increases the participation of your students and it is something they enjoy doing, so take the time to learn a little more about it and let the fun begin!
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