There were a whopping 198,981 Hour of Code events held the second week of December, with students at Los Gatos’ Stratford School participating in the worldwide coding activity. The Hour of Code, which was sponsored by the nonprofit organization code.org, was designed to demystify coding and show that anybody can do computer programming.
Stratford’s more than 250 Hour of Code student participants were in the first through fifth grades.
“I’m bombarding them with fun stuff to get them excited,” computer science teacher Greg Tompkins said. “Half of them probably don’t realize they’re learning.”
That’s because Tompkins’ students were coding while playing games like Angry Birds and Minecraft.
“In Minecraft you place pieces of code so the character does things,” a fourth-grader named Jolie explained. “You can build a house or shear a sheep. Some of it’s difficult because sometimes there are many twists and bends.”
Even so, Jolie said she was having fun building a house out of birch planks.
Another fourth-grader, Aaron, had a “Star Wars” application going. “You press the arrow keys and try to get a message to the rebel pilots,” Aaron said. “If you do it right, it makes a funny sound.”
The sounds that go along with the games are one reason why most of Tompkins’ students wear headphones when they’re learning to code.
“When you’ve completed a puzzle correctly, it buzzes,” fourth-grade student Sasha said. “And if you make a mistake, Steve, the character, droops his head.”
Although the Hour of Code was a special event, the Stratford students are always learning about computers because Tompkins teaches 12 computer science classes per week. “My fourth- and fifth-grade students are doing Pythonroom, where they have to type the code using symbols,” Tompkins said. “So they’re using logic and problem-solving skills. We also teach Microsoft Office, Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and they learn drawing and graphics on paint.net.”
While first-grade students learn to point, click, drag and drop, Tompkins’ fourth-grade students have progressed to the point where they were able to design a 3D model of President Thomas Jefferson’s historic home, Monticello.
Tompkins said that Stratford’s computer science classes are aligned with the curriculum developed by the Computer Science Teachers Association.
“There are no state standards for computer science,” he added.
Stratford, which has 18 Bay Area campuses, recently became the first California school to earn a Carnegie STEM Excellence Pathway Digital Seal for excellence in science, technology, engineering and math.
