Moorestown Friends School Celebrates Coding All Year Long

Moorestown, NJ -- Like many schools, Moorestown Friends School’s Lower School participated in the the global Hour of Code campaign (Dec. 7-13) to encourage children to code for the first time.

This program, by Code.org, features a number of skill-building activitiesfeaturing Minecraft, Star Wars, and Frozen characters.

However, this was not the first time students at the Lower School have been exposed to Coding this year, school representatives said Friday morning.

The school already has a Coding curriculum, teaching students to write programs, think sequentially, and interact with technology in creative ways. The program teaches students ages 3-10 to navigate, draw, and manipulate virtual environments with code every week of the school year.

The program was introduced this year for all Lower School students (Pre-K-4th grade), with Liz Kahn serving as the full-time Coding teacher. Kahn has a master’s degree in elementary education from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. in Psychology from Temple University.

She meets with all Lower School students for class on two days of a six-day cycle to dive deeper into these concepts using robots, creating original drawings with code, and even programming holiday lights in different patterns to understand repeat loops and pattern matching.

Teamwork and collaboration skills are constantly being developed. Programmable robots with names like “Beebot,” “Dash,” and “Dot” are often used for lessons and problem solving. In addition, students in Kindergarten through Grade 4 meet in the Computer Lab with Computers teacher Terry Harlan to develop their technology skills.

Ryan Kennedy, Principal Architect at Kickdrum Technology Group and parent to a Lower School student, was the guest speaker for the Coding class on Dec. 8.

Kennedy provided some examples of projects he works on professionally and how code relates to the work that he and his co-workers produce.

As he presented a variety of apps, students were able to quickly identify coding terminology used such as “debugging” and “loops.”

He also brought a variety of props which included buttons and sensors, all of which incorporate code in some way.

“And what language do these use?” Kahn asked her students.

“Code!” the students responded.

After he explained the coding involved in the four sensors and buttons, students then drafted observational drawings in small groups.

The Hour of Code is a one-hour introduction to computer science, designed to demystify code and show that anybody can learn the basics. The grassroots campaign goal is for tens of millions of students to try an Hour of Code during Dec. 7-13, in celebration of Computer Science Education Week.

The attached images of Ryan Kennedy speaking to Lower School first graders was provided by Moorestown Friends School