Coding for Kids – The Best Teaching Styles

With technology moving faster than any time in human history, it's becoming increasingly important to expose and encourage our next generation to learn the fundamentals of coding.

Coding for kids is becoming a standard offering at many public schools, with more advanced teachings available at an increasing number of private after-school businesses. Most offerings for learning to code can be divided into three categories:

• Curriculum Driven – by far the most common style, refers to the traditional predefined or static curriculum teaching model, typically in a many-to-one ratio.
• Software Driven – uses a software system to teach kids, where students are exposed to concepts via online guidance and quizzes.
• Coach Driven – revolves around a direct mentor-mentee relationship, where students are taught in a more custom, immersion style.

While Curriculum and Software Driven styles have an advantage of scalability and repeatability, Coach Driven instead focuses on a more custom and enhanced experience for the student.

In a Coach Driven format, learning concepts in a curriculum course is not the focus. Rather, the focus is simply to create custom apps, demo the apps, and repeat (at a slightly higher difficulty level). By doing so, students learn the concepts required to create apps by the act of coding them, and they are given time goals by setting demo-day deadlines.

Because this format requires a very small student-to-teacher ratio (typically 2:1 or better), it allows Code Coaches® to individualize the teaching by creating apps that interest and engage the student, at the appropriate difficulty level.

theCoderSchool uses Code Coaches® to guide each student to progress and grow their own unique Coder Tree®. With roots as fundamental concepts, the trunk as base coding, and the branches as advanced technologies, students create apps in an immersion style while learning concepts that grow their own tree. Like real trees, each student is unique and grows in a unique way. Like real trees, more practice in roots is required to grow a larger trunk, and more practice in the trunk is required to grow bigger branches.

Today, kids and parents alike have many choices for learning to code. Remember that whether Curriculum, Software, or Coach Driven, most important of all is that our next generation of kids is prepared for the coming onslaught of technology. Learn to code, change the world.

At theCoderSchool Montgomery, we want to do more than just teach coding. We want aspiring coders to use their newfound passion as a stepping-stone to thinking outside. As a part of the #1 coding school in Silicon Valley, our new Montgomery, NJ location is planning a virtual opening to the community in June and is highly anticipating kids onsite in the future.

Stay connected for free virtual coding sessions on Facebook or visit our website, fill out our form, and we'll be in touch shortly to tell you more!

#happycoding

This post is an advertorial piece contributed by a Patch Community Partner, a local sponsor. The views expressed in this post are the author's own.

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