5th Graders Build Games with the Hopscotch App

We are three weeks in to our 5th Grade Code-in Project and the students are creating and designing a variety of programs.  Students work with the Hopscotch app for 45 minutes each week.  The first week they explored how the app worked and leaned how to manipulate the visual programming language.  The second week I introduced them to categories for judging for our student showcase and awards which helped to provide focus for their designs.  Students will be awarded prizes for most creative, most technically challenging and the student favorite.  There will be a student showcase in class May 28th and prizes will be awarded at the school board meeting June 6th.

Looking for a way to provide relevence to the project, students were asked to create something useful with their projects.  The class has 1st grade buddies and wanted to created simple programs they could share with them.  Students took to their math books and science books and created educational games to share with the first graders.

One student created a game to help younger students learn their shapes. Here is a video of her explaining her first attempt at using her coding skills to build a game.

Another student is working on creating a similar math game.

Another student is creating an interactive times table.   Remember this is after less than two hours of experience with the app. There are many other projects being created, some quite technical and complex.  I will share more as they complete them.

I am so excited to see what they continue to imagine and create in the final two weeks.

This website was  developed to share their work with parents, classmates and the community:
 5th Grade Code In

Several students have asked about something harder, they want more options for creating.  I am trying to think of a way to extend this project for them next year as 6th graders.  They will attend a middle school next year and I am hoping to introduce them to Scratch so they can continue to program and create.

We have two more weeks for the project and then I will post more student work and our winners!