Go on a coding adventure with our NEW project paths!

To celebrate the new term, we’re bringing new coding discoveries to your Code Club. Find out how you can support your club members to become independent tech creators with our free educational project paths

Our new project path learning resources are structured so learners develop skills, knowledge, and increased independence as they progress through each path.  

Each path contains six projects. In the first three projects, known as ‘Explore’, new skills are introduced and learners are provided with step-by-step instructions to build their confidence. Next up are two ‘Design’ projects, to give children the opportunity to practise their new skills by creating their own personalised projects. The final ‘Invent’ project encourages coders to meet a project brief and decide how they want to develop their ideas using the toolbox of skills they’ve learned in previous projects. 

The project paths

Explore the project paths and choose one that suits your club this term. 

Introduction to Scratch: sprites, scripts, and loops
Club members find out how to add code, costumes, and sounds to sprites. They can make animations, games, apps, and books within this path.

Space Talk Scratch project

More Scratch: broadcast, decisions, and variables
To build on what they have learnt in the ‘Introduction to Scratch’ path, learners explore message broadcasting, if..then and if..then..else decisions, and variables.

Liz Smart, Learning Coordinator, shares why she’s enjoying the Grow a dragonfly project with her Code Club: 

“When club members realised the range of edits they could make to existing Scratch sounds, and how these could be used in their code, the club sessions got super creative! Every session since then has had an extra level of noise….and I love it!

An added bonus to this project was the amazing dragonfly facts that we all learned.”

Grow a Dragonfly Scratch project

Further Scratch: clones, my blocks, and Boolean logic
To take their Scratch learning a stage further, club members learn how to use Boolean logic, functions, clones, and more within their projects.

Introduction to Python: variables, functions, and loops
Coders are introduced to the text-based programming language Python. They code with variables, loops, and functions to create visual and interactive artwork, animations, simulations, games, and more.

Physical computing with Scratch and the Raspberry Pi
Bring physical computing into your club! This path guides you through how to use input and output electronics with Scratch and a Raspberry Pi computer.

Introduction to Unity: 3D objects, character controllers, colliders, text, and buttons
Help your coders take their first exciting steps in learning how to create 3D worlds and games with collectibles, timers, and non-player characters. These projects are brought to you with generous support from Unity Technologies.

Join us at an online workshop and discover how your Code Club can make 3D worlds with our NEW Unity project path!  

Unity 101: Setting up for success
Wednesday 2 February, 11:00 GMT / 6:00 EST / 16:30 IST

Unity 102: Creating 3D worlds
Wednesday 9 February, 13:00 GMT / 8:00 EST / 18:30 IST

Celebrating success 

Once club members have completed a path, celebrate their achievements by downloading one of our editable path certificates. 

If you’re based in the UK, the USA, India, or Ireland, head to your dashboard to download. If you’re based outside of these countries, visit our Code Club International website

Share your completed projects with the Code Club community on Twitter, using the hashtag #MyCodeClub.

New year, new resources! Welcoming well-being in 2022

Here at Code Club, we’ve been talking about our New Year’s resolutions. Like many people around the world, our focus this year will be on our health and well-being.

In this blog post, we’ll be sharing how we plan to look after ourselves, each other, and you — our amazing Code Club community! Spoiler alert: It involves three new resources for you.

As we welcome 2022, we want to talk about what we can do to look after our mental health this year. Focusing on good mental health is an excellent New Year’s resolution and it ties in brilliantly with Children’s Mental Health Week, which takes place next month (7–13 February). 

Last year, the team got active to help our physical and mental well-being. We put on our walking shoes to take part in a virtual walk from London to Delhi that took 12 months and 14,251,903 steps! We also had a go at yoga and practised mindfulness to help us stay healthy.

To help us continue with our well-being mindset, we’ve been thinking hard about how we can support the health and well-being of our clubs in the coming months.

NEW well-being project collection

Following the success of our project collections in 2021, we are excited to launch a new project collection all about health and well-being. Each project has step-by-step instructions that are easy to follow to help young coders and educators to learn together and develop their coding skills! 

The Relax and stretch project is an ideal beginner Scratch project. Your coders will motivate people to stretch and exercise regularly throughout the day. 

Your confident coders can work on our Mandala project to create beautiful images by repeating geometric symbols. This is known to be a relaxing and mindful activity, and your young people can make their own mandalas in Scratch with this project.

Mandala Scratch project

And there’s more!

Our NEW Scratch and Python word searches are now live. We hope that your young coders enjoy them as much as our team did! These resources are not only great offline activities, but also encourage mindfulness and a moment of calm for coders in the classroom. 

So whether you are coming back to Code Club after a break or simply want to focus on well-being in your club this term, check out these new resources.

If you’re based in the UK, the USA, India, or Ireland, head to your dashboard to download these three new resources. If you’re based outside of these countries, head to our Code Club International website and find the collection and word searches inside your Club Organiser Pack.

How to move from Scratch to Python in Code Club

Most Code Clubs start out with Scratch, but when the time is right, you might want to try out some text-based languages such as Python in your club. In this post, we explain how to introduce the Python language in a fun and engaging way.

When to introduce Python in Code Club

Many programmers use text-based languages like Python because of how efficient and powerful they are. While Scratch is a powerful language that can be used to create quite sophisticated games and programs, a time may come when your learners are asking you how to perform tasks that are overly complicated in a block-based programming language and would be much easier to do in Python. This is a great time to consider introducing this language!

hero_360fab49-0552-4b20-87e3-52ef956d5f96Code Club, meet Python

Here are a few great ways in which you can start introducing Python as a concept to your Code Clubbers:

  1. Show them real-world examples of the language: if you aren’t familiar with Python yourself yet, don’t worry! Get your Code Clubbers excited about Python by showing them that the language is used to create many of their favourite sites. This list shows that popular websites such as Google, Facebook, and YouTube are use Python code.
  2. Prove the power of Python: if you are familiar with Python, you could try writing a script that demonstrates how efficient the language is. For example, you could use the language’s built-in mathematical functions to demonstrate how quickly you can solve a maths exercise from a textbook!
  3. Automate tasks with Python: you can also try slowly incorporating Python into the running of your Code Club sessions. For example, you could write a script based on our Team chooser project that randomly picks one of your learners to do show-and-tell at the end of the session.

team-chooser

How to start writing Python in Code Club

Similarities between Scratch and Python

Once you have introduced your learners to the concept of Python, it’s time to get them writing their own code. This means acquainting them with Python syntax (i.e. the specific rules that determine how the language needs to be written).

A great way to do this is to get the young people to translate a simple project they have made in Scratch into the Python language. The Code Club Scratch project Username generator is perfect for this, and the following image demonstrates how one block from the project can be written in Python:

2-3-5

You can find instructions on how to translate this entire project into Python in the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s free online course Scratch to Python: Moving from Block- to Text-based Programming.

Another useful exercise is to show the children how all the basic Scratch blocks can be written in Python. You could ask different Code Clubbers to choose their favourite Scratch blocks and then work together with them to find out how that block would be represented with Python. In our Scratch to Python online course, you can also find illustrations of many Scratch blocks and their Python equivalents.

Code Club Python projects

Just like with Scratch, our Python projects are designed to gradually introduce children to the syntax and concepts of Python. We currently have two Python modules, starting with the project About me. In this project, learners write a Python program that tells people about themselves using the print() function and ASCII art.

Screen Shot 2018-06-06 at 13.41.12

If you’re not familiar with Python, don’t think this means that you can’t introduce the language in your Code Club. Simply try out each project before introducing it to the children and you can develop your Python skills together. You too will start to see how using Python can help you with day-to-day tasks!

Having fun with Python

We know learners love the graphics in Scratch, and moving to Python doesn’t mean you have to say goodbye to nice visual results! Our Turtle race! project in Python module 1 is a great one for demonstrating the fun games and animations you can create with Python:

turtlerace

Using Python in your Code Club means you can also work on long-term projects that show learners the scope and excitement of text-based programming. For example, Astro Pi is an annual coding competition that runs young people’s Python code on the International Space Station, and we always encourage Code Clubs to participate. What’s more exciting than sending your code into space?!

Debugging: community advice

As your Code Clubbers get to grip with this new language, a lot of your session time might be spent on debugging (i.e. fixing errors in code). We asked two Code Club volunteers about their top debugging techniques:

Lorna Gibson, Code Club Regional Coordinator for Scotland:
“When children in my club hit an error in Python, we turn fixing it into a game of ‘spot the difference.’ First I encourage them to compare the worksheet code with their own. If they ask for help again and promise they have already tried to spot the difference, I will go over and have a look. I win a point if I can spot the difference in under a minute. Motivated by competing with me, more often than not they ultimately spot the error anyway. It’s all about scaffolding and building problem-solving skills for the future.”

python-error
Darren Townsend, Code Club volunteer:
“I use comparisons of Scratch to Python at the beginning, for example to explain that ‘while True’ is the same as the ‘Forever’ block. I also have some Python cheat sheets which give examples of common Python code. Some of the learners find it easier to debug Python than Scratch, because Python gives you error messages to indicate what went wrong. It’s usually down to spelling errors!”

More guidance on transitioning from Scratch to Python

Feeling ready to take on Python in Code Club? Now is a great time to take the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s free online course Scratch to Python: Moving from block- to text-based programming.