Colorado Computer Science: 3rd Grade
- Level Elementary School
- Number of Lessons 35
- Grade 3rd
This course is aligned to the Colorado 3rd grade Computer Science standards and is designed to provide computer science and digital literacy instruction for Colorado 3rd grade students. It is meant to be taught approximately weekly.
See the full syllabus for all topics and activities, or explore the course to try it out.
UNITS - 5 (35 lessons)
Students get oriented to the CodeHop Playground, use computational thinking to design an obstacle course, and learn about computing systems.
Through a sequential Scout story, students use drawing tools and basic programming commands including sequences, loops, events, and motion/look blocks to animate a story.
Students explore digital literacy topics including cyberbullying, digital footprints, cybersecurity, data analysis, file management, networking, and the ethics of AI products.
Students build core programming skills spanning sequences, events, broadcast messages, loops, debugging, conditionals, variables, comparison operators, functions, and lists.
Students apply programming concepts to interdisciplinary content in social studies (geography, communities), science (weather, adaptations), ELA (poetry), and math (multiplication, addition, geometry).
Explore a sample lesson from this course!
3rd grade students build programs in CodeHop Blocks using parallel sequences, events, broadcasts, loops, conditionals, variables, functions, and lists, with projects like a falling objects game and an I-Spy game. They apply coding to early civilizations, community adaptation, weather and climate, animal adaptations, poetry, multiplication, addition, and classifying shapes. Students also learn to spot cyberbullying, manage their digital footprint, practice cybersecurity, explore data and networks, and make ethical choices about AI products.
An Interdisciplinary Exploration unit uses coding to teach grade-level content in math, science, English language arts, and social studies, such as geography and early civilizations, how communities adapt to their environment, weather and climate, animal adaptations, animating poetry, multiplication, multi-digit addition, and classifying shapes.
The course includes 36 lessons, each about 45 minutes long, providing a full year of instruction. Every lesson is built in a ready-to-teach format, with step-by-step videos that walk students through the lesson. Lessons are designed to be teacher-led using an "I do, we do, you do" format, and a self-paced option is also available. Many digital literacy lessons include unplugged activities with printable handouts. Concepts spiral across grade levels, so students build on what they learned even if not every lesson is completed in a single year.
No. There are no prerequisites, and the course is designed to support all learners regardless of prior computer science experience. The Getting Started lessons introduce CodeHop step by step through Scout's programming expedition before students move into more advanced concepts.
Colorado Computer Science: 3rd Grade is aligned to the Colorado Academic Standards for Computer Science, and the course syllabus identifies the standards each lesson addresses to support planning.
