Reading. Writing. Arithmetic. Coding.

Young learners choreograph their own crazy dance steps and teach other students how to perform them. In the process, they learn how important it is to correctly sequence their instructions and then practice coding in visual apps like codeSpark and Tynker.

With the Hide and Seek activity, students hide an object and record a video of themselves giving specific directions (commands) in a certain order (sequence) to help another student find it. This hands-on activity shows the class how literally computers take directions.

In the Who’s the Tallest? activity, students learn to create algorithms that figure out who the tallest person in the class is. This teaches students to formulate step-by-step rules to accomplish a goal, much the way code tells a computer what to do.

Students take pictures of items in the classroom and create photo collages centered around a single condition, like a shape or color. Then they share the collages with other groups, who guess what the condition is. This gives students a chance to see if the conditions they create are clear, an essential part of writing effective code.

Students can use the Swift code they’ve learned so far to create their own worlds and puzzles in Swift Playgrounds. They’ll practice customizing their worlds by changing gems, portals, and characters, and use arrays to keep track of them all. Then they can share their finished creations with friends.