And we did it again! Me and Blanca Mansfield, which run a Python Code Club at the school, ran the Hour of Code 2018 at Arahoe Primary School, working with all classes from Year 3 to Year 6. It is the second time that we run the event at the school.
We’ve managed to do it in 2 days working with different groups of students ranging from 7 to 11 years old. The groups ranged from all year 6 students at once (60 or 70 of them) all the way to a single class of year 3 students. The lessons from last year made the organization much easier, so I didn’t need to prepare as much as I had last year.
The overall feedback from teachers and students is that it was great! And seeing how quickly the kids would grasp the concepts and just zoom through the challenges was amazing! Here some pictures of the kids in action:
The highlight of this year was the Dance Party activity! The creators managed to put some very good entry level concepts like events, properties, etc, on a challenge where you become the choreographer of a dance clip, choosing the music, characters, dance moves and background (this will be the closest that I will get to making “The Floss” properly). If you want to try it yourself, or show your kids, you can find the activity here.
And if you want to see how it looks, here is my “masterpiece”! 😀
As per last year, I only managed to run this event because of the support that was available. So thanks to:
- Arahoe School, for let me run the event with all the kids, and in special to Andrea Howard and Megan Connolly for clearing the schedule with all the classes and teachers.
- Blanca Mansfield, that not only co hosted the event with me, but also rallied the Python Code Club students as helpers.
- That amazing group of “Pythons”, which helped us a lot – we always had at least 3 senior students with us, answering questions, explaining concepts, helping them to go over any challenges.
- The teachers at Arahoe that open their classroom doors and trusted us with their students.
- All the students that were really engaged and really gave the activities a go – some of them finished 3 activities in one hour
And a special thanks to Theta that have always supported my volunteer efforts (on this and many other activities). Theta understands how important this type of volunteer work is for me. Last year, the company decided to grant me one day of special leave so I didn’t have to do the whole event on my own time. This year, they sponsored me for the whole event! Being on a company that really understands the importance of volunteer work makes me even more motivated to continuing contributing to the community in as many ways as possible!
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