This November and December, kids learned how to write code at our 8-week long Code Writing for Kids Club!  Participants became more familiar with computer science, web development, video game design, animation and application design. More importantly, learning to code helped increase students’ academic confidence and improve their classroom productivity, keyboarding skills, critical thinking and reasoning and test taking ability; all critical skills for the new Common Core assessments.

Classes began on November 1, and continued for every week until December 20.  Classes for elementary school students were held at the John Sinnott Elementary School in Milpitas, while classes for middle/high schoolers were held at the Sobrato Conference Center in Milpitas.  Descriptions of the classes can be found below:

9:00 AM – 10:30 AM – Jr. Coders:  This class is designed for students in grades 1-3  

Our Jr. Coders program offers a curriculum-based, hands on approach to coding.  

11:30 AM – 1:00 PM – Code Writing Club:  This class is for students in grades 4-6

Scratch is a great language to learn for beginners of all ages, as it is very visual (games can be created fairly quickly) as well as powerful (we can teach advanced concepts like first class functions, recursions, and even OOP). Exploration and “learning to learn” is a key component as well – we encourage our students to learn new concepts in a guided environment so they know how to learn on their own in the future!  

2:00 PM – 4:00 PM – App Team:  This class is for students in Grades 7-12

In these weekly sessions, students will dig in and learn technical chops and put their code together, discuss what awesome features they want, and continue more coding. After each session,  we will have a Launch Party, where the app is presented to friends and family, AND we’ll have some guest judges give feedback.  Our App Team programs are for ALL ABILITIES, from no experience to hacker!