Girl holds a laptop showing a coding project while smiling woman beside her holds a sign reading “we made this”.

“We made this!” Discovering the power of agency in your Code Club

Explore how empowering young people to choose their projects, topics, or programming languages can lead to more engaged Code Club creators who believe their actions make a real difference.

What do we mean by ‘agency’?

At Code Club, giving young people agency means fostering a culture where creators are driven and self-motivated to direct their own growth through their passion for coding.

What are the advantages?

By giving creators agency, you’ll create a more meaningful learning experience. If you allow your creators to work on ideas they care about, their curiosity becomes the foundation for them to develop their coding skills.

We want creators to feel empowered at Code Club and to open up opportunities for them to feel that their voice and their actions can make a difference. This is one way to encourage them to become more engaged and confident. But giving your creators agency doesn’t mean giving up control entirely; help from mentors is essential to getting your creators started in these steps towards independence. Of course, they will also need your guidance and feedback to make lasting progress.

“You can see on their faces when they are creating something from zero that they feel like magicians. They start to create their own things because we have given them the tutorials to follow the steps; they create new things and bring their own projects and new ideas to us!”
– Iliana Ramirez, Code Club Partner, Mexico City

Two children smile while working together at laptops in a busy Code Club. — Use our projects to create games, animations, and much more

So, how can you give your creators agency?

Adding choice to your Code Club sessions can be really simple. Creators volunteer to come to Code Club, and so they have already made their first decision: to follow one of their interests. Once they have arrived, there is no right way to learn to code, so each creator can discover their own path.

Here are three easy ways you could help your creators take ownership of their learning journey at your next session:

1. Projects

Try offering three project ideas and letting creators team up to work on the one they each like best. You could also let creators choose any project they like from our project site.

Offer your creators a thrilling change of pace with these three projects:

‘Silly eyes’ is a Scratch project that gives creators the freedom to create their own silly eyes character. The character’s large, silly eyes will follow the mouse pointer and bring the character to life.

‘Teach a machine’ is part of our AI toolkit path. Creators use a webcam and machine learning to train a computer to tell them how many fingers they are holding up.

Get ready to play and share all the best tunes on the BBC micro:bit with ‘Music Player’. Your creators don’t even need the physical micro:bit to try this one.

We have over 200 coding projects to choose from, and each supports creators to learn at their own pace and grow their confidence.

2. Topic or theme

Why not challenge your creators to agree on a theme for the next Code Club session and create projects that link to the topic? Mentors can then encourage them to share how their projects link to the theme at the end of the session and vote on the next theme together.

A topic can be anything that your creators are interested in, such as animals, a favourite sport, or a seasonal festival.
You can link our projects to any topic with a bit of imagination. A volcano theme might lead to adapting Boat Race to create a game where you can’t touch the lava. You will find that your creators have lots of ideas!

3. Computing language

Give your creators a choice of which computing language they use through our project paths. Each path is a collection of six projects that cover a set of skills needed for a particular piece of hardware or software alongside design and engineering skills.

Provide your creators with the information they need to make a choice from a number of different project paths and let them explore the ones that interest them the most.

It is important that creators start at the ‘Introduction to…’ level if they are new to the software or hardware being covered.

Start exploring the Code Club projects site and give your creators the agency to make projects they care about at your next Code Club session.

A group of people participate in a coding workshop. A person wearing a black shirt with "code club" written on the back is seated in the foreground. Several laptops are on the table, with participants engaging in programming activities. White digital icons, including lightbulbs, graphs, and a globe, decorate the image

Check out these updates to the Code Club platform

We’ve introduced new features to help club leaders manage events, track attendance, and communicate more effectively. These updates make running your club easier, so you can focus on supporting young creators.

Easily check in and check out creators

Club leaders can now use the platform to check creators in and out as they arrive and leave events. This feature helps you keep track of attendance in real-time to help you organise larger groups and keep everyone attending safe if there is a fire alarm. After an event, you can also look back and see who attended and who didn’t.

New search and filter options

Managing larger groups of attendees is now easier with the search and filter feature. You can quickly find specific creators and filter by status. The three groups you can filter by are:

Not arrived – Creators who haven’t arrived.
Checked in – Creators currently at the event.
Checked out – Creators who have left.

Email attendees who booked tickets

Need to send a reminder or communicate a change to the event? You can message all attendees who have booked tickets to an upcoming event directly from the Code Club platform. Whether you want to share changes to event details or provide information on resources in advance, it’s now quick and hassle-free. You can even use markdown to format your message.

Special assistance flag

When booking into an event, parents/carers can share any special assistance a creator might need to join the event or access the venue. In the ‘manage attendees’ section, you will see any needs they might have under the creator’s name as a flag icon with the word ‘Assistance’ beside it. To see more details, click on the name of the young person and the type of assistance they require will be visible.

A user interface card displaying information about Jill Hill, age 12. It includes two selectable options: "Work on my own project" and "Assistance," with the latter highlighted. In the top right corner, there are three buttons: a cross (X), a checkmark (✔) highlighted in green, and an arrow pointing right. — Special assistance flag feature

Find resources you need quicker

We’ve reorganised the resources section on our website to make it easier for you to find the resources you need. Whether you’re looking for activities, certificates, or resources for planning an upcoming session, everything is now structured to make it more accessible.

A webpage from Code Club featuring a "Resources" section with a green banner that reads, "Our resources are designed to help you start, manage, and grow your club." Below, a "Browse by category" section displays three colorful icons: a green box with code brackets and a cursor, a pink box with a lightbulb, and a blue box with a magnifying glass over a person icon. — Resources on the Code Club website

Expanding language options

The Code Club website, including our platform features, is available in five languages. These are Dutch, English, French, Japanese and Welsh. We will soon be adding resources in these languages as well as Greek translations to further support our global community. A huge thank you to our volunteer community of translators who share their skills to make Code Club accessible to more young people around the world!

Thank you to our volunteer community of translators

These updates are designed to help you manage your club more efficiently, so mentors can focus on providing a great experience to creators.

Log in now and explore these new features! If you have any feedback about the platform or website, please email support@codeclub.org.

A group of young people gather around a table as they work on activity together.

Three icebreaker activities that will build connections within your club

Kickstart your Code Club by using an icebreaker activity! Let us guide you through three icebreakers and how they can help your creators to connect, collaborate, and feel comfortable learning together.

Young people all face the mentor who stands at the front of the classroom — Young people at Linton-on-Ouse Primary School and Nursery getting started at their Code Club.

What is the best way to start your Code Club? There will never be one right answer that will fit everyone: the way you run your sessions will depend on the unique needs of your attendees, their ages, and interests.

But what about those scenarios where you have been thrown a curveball? A new club member is joining, or your creators have all rushed in, and they’re bouncing off the walls! This is where you might want to consider an icebreaker activity.

What is an icebreaker?

An icebreaker is a short activity that takes up to 15 minutes to complete. They can be used at the start of your Code Club session to help everyone get to know each other and warm up. Icebreakers are also a good way to disconnect from whatever activity your creators have come from and turn their focus to Code Club. We recommend choosing an unplugged activity for this.

Let’s explore three icebreaker activities and how they could benefit your Code Club.

New to the club

First up is ‘introduce a teammate’. This icebreaker is excellent for welcoming any newcomers to your Code Club. Led by the creators, it gives them an opportunity to get to know each other in a fun way.

This icebreaker is a low-pressure activity to encourage communication, help new members quickly gain a sense of belonging, and develop public speaking skills, especially in quieter creators. It’s even more of a challenge if creators already know each other: what new facts can they share?

Creating a positive learning environment

Do your creators regularly come charging into the room, buzzing with excitement? Of course they do, and you’re keen to channel this energy into your session, but how do you go about creating a positive learning environment?

The icebreaker ‘robot maze’, works to ease your creators into the session by immediately focusing their energy on an exciting task, as they learn the importance of of being specific when creating their code.

There’s so much flexibility with our icebreaker activities. Why not encourage calm by making this an individual activity. Each creator can try out their instructions on the robot one at a time, getting their brains into gear as they link their learning to the coding project or content you are planning to cover in the session.

Mixing things up

You can use ‘the low-tech social network’ icebreaker to encourage young creators to get to know each other. Creators who regularly attend Code Club may find themselves sitting with the same people at each session.

This icebreaker presents the perfect opportunity to help your creators connect by finding similarities with one another. By encouraging them to chat to lots of different creators, you can build cooperation and teamwork skills to use further down the line.

Check out all of our unplugged activities and try one of these icebreakers in your next Code Club session!

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