CodeHS makes updates to the elementary curriculum to make teaching CS to elementary students easier than ever.
We are thrilled to share some fantastic updates to our CodeHS K-6 Computer Science curriculum that will make your teaching journey even more effective and enjoyable. Let’s dive into what’s new and improved!
1. Enhanced Ready-to-Go Format
Our Ready-to-Go format now has improved functionality for easier navigation. Here are the highlights:
- Easier Navigation: More places to click to advance or go back through slides, along with slide titles and numbers for quickly jumping to specific sections.
- Interactive Activities: These open within the slides for whole-class completion and can be pushed to students’ devices with a single click.
- Starter Code & Sample Code: Both open within the slides for teachers to demo and can be pushed to students with one click, whether using Scratch or ScratchJr.
Take a look at this video to see the new Ready-to-Go format in action: Update Overview
2. Updated K-6 Computer Science Pathway
We’ve completely revamped our K-6 Computer Science Pathway to ensure a smoother and more effective sequence of concepts for each grade level. Using pedagogical best practices, our course visualizations, featuring Scout the Squirrel (our adorable elementary mascot), take students on an exciting journey starting in a city in kindergarten and ending in outer space by 5th grade. 🏙️🚀
These visualizations can be printed as posters to track progress throughout each course, making it fun and engaging for students. Here’s a sneak peek at the journey:
3. Simplified, Shortened, and New Lessons
Simplified and Shortened Lessons: To better fit into your busy schedules, we’ve simplified and shortened the lessons in the kindergarten course to 30 minutes. Each lesson also comes with an optional 45-minute extension to match the length of other courses if needed. Similarly, the first 5 lessons in 1st and 2nd grade are designed to be 30 minutes long with an optional 15-minute extension. This adjustment helps ease students into the school year and build basic coding skills at a comfortable pace.
New Lessons: We’ve added over 90 new K-6 computer science lessons! These include fun, story-based lessons with Scout the Squirrel to introduce students to ScratchJr and Scratch, interactive Digital Citizenship lessons, and exciting projects that build on each other to help review multiple CS concepts in engaging ways. Here are a few examples of the new lessons you can look forward to:
Below are some examples of new lessons this year! If you teach with CodeHS, login to explore these lessons today.
Scout’s Scratch Expedition: This lesson is part of a sequential story-driven unit. Students will use basic Scratch commands to program a sprite to move and talk.
Get Organized with Files: Students will be able to use a mock desktop environment to modify files, demonstrate appropriate file-naming conventions, and organize files into folders.
Transportation Speeds and Sounds: Students will be able to use “say” or “sound” blocks and speed blocks to program modes of transportation.
4. Introducing Karel Adventures
We’re excited to introduce Karel Adventures as an option in our elementary curriculum, recommended for 6th or advanced 5th graders. This engaging course allows teachers to introduce students to JavaScript, starting with block coding and transitioning to text-based coding. It’s a fun, story-driven way for students to dive into JavaScript. If you want to learn more about using Karel Adventures with your elementary students, check out this Overview Video. 🐕💻
Other Notable Updates
- Differentiation Tool: Each coding lesson now includes Printable Code Instructions. These are code block-specific slides that can be printed for students needing extra support or for those working with additional teachers/paraprofessionals.
- AI Lessons: We’ve added one AI lesson per grade level, teaching about AI at developmentally appropriate levels.
- Interdisciplinary CS Pathway: Our K-6 Interdisciplinary CS Pathway courses now have a new suggested sequence for each subject area, arranged by CS difficulty. This provides a clearer progression for each module.
New CodeHS Elementary Facebook Group
We have created a CodeHS Facebook group for Elementary CodeHS teachers! You can use this Facebook group as an opportunity to meet other CS educators, ask questions, and collaborate with them on teaching strategies in your classroom. Click here to join!
We hope these updates will make your teaching experience smoother and more enjoyable, and most importantly, inspire your students to love computer science! If you have any questions or need further assistance, please reach out at hello@codehs.com.
Happy coding! 🌟
To learn more about CodeHS Elementary, visit codehs.com/elementary or contact us here.
Exciting Updates to CodeHS K-6 Computer Science Curriculum! was originally published in Read Write Code on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
