CodeHS Middle School Insider: CodeHS Project Catalog, Digital Wellness Tip, and more!

🧑‍💻 Teacher Tool: Code Review

Getting students to talk about their code can be challenging. There is a lot of technical jargon in programming, programs can be complex, and students may lack confidence. However, talking about programs can lead to an improved understanding of programming concepts, and it helps students build important communication skills.

Code Review is an activity that can easily be integrated into programming lessons to encourage students to talk about code. In the real world, code review is a software development process where code written by one or more developers is reviewed by other developers in order to identify and fix errors, improve the quality of the code, and share knowledge and best practices. Incorporating Code Review into your lessons can help students see that making mistakes and improving code is part of the process!

Here’s how to implement Code Review into your lesson:

Choose a programming activity that has a few different possible approaches. The approaches don’t have to be significantly different - perhaps the order of a few commands might be different.
Pair students up and have them Code Review a peer’s program. During this process, give them a few guiding questions to guide their review. Here are a few sample questions:

What do I like about this code?
How is this code the same as my code?
How is this code different from my code?
Are there any bugs? If so, how can the bugs be fixed?

3. Give students a chance to debrief with their partner, and if time permits, with the class.

📱 Digital Wellness Tip

The average American spends more than 6 hours of the day on a screen, which is a lot of time! Watch this video from PBS to learn more about what the scientific research says about this. Then, use these questions to guide a thoughtful discussion on the topic.

How often do you spend time in front of screens?
What types of activities do you do during screen time?
What do you like or dislike about spending time in front of screens?

🌐 CodeHS Project Catalog

As the school year winds down, encourage students to continue learning with projects in the CodeHS Project Catalog! We have a variety of activities perfect for middle school students, and they’re easy to supplement your curriculum with. Here are a few projects I recommend:

Explore the Project Catalog

🌟 K- 12 Spanish Curriculum

Did you know that many of our CodeHS courses have been translated into Spanish? Students can individually change the preferred language on their account to view any available content in Spanish instead of English.

This can make all the difference for a student trying to learn Computer Science and English at the same time.

Learn More

🔥 Coding in the Wild Blog

The Coding the Wild posts are great for showcasing how professionals use computer science across multiple disciplines.

I recommend using “Coding for Artificial Intelligence at TikTok.” It's at a great reading level for middle school students and highlights some great advice for younger coders.

✅ Become a CodeHS Certified Educator

CodeHS Certified Educators have the opportunity to connect with fellow computer science teachers, and they gain access to perks like CodeHS swag and beta testing for new features on our site. To become a Certified Educator, you need to: