5 strategies for National Coding Week 2021
National Coding Week is here! An annual event that aims to help learners with digital skills. This year’s event takes place between the 13th and 19th September 2021 and we’d love to hear how you’re getting involved.
Stuck for ideas? We’ve compiled a list of useful resources, which could be used to encourage engagement with coding:
Have you considered bringing a software engineer, data scientist or a cloud computing specialist into the classroom? Proven to increase engagement, interest and enjoyment of STEM subjects, STEM Ambassadors are free to access, with over 30,000 professionals available from a whole range of different backgrounds. Click here to find out more about STEM Ambassadors.
- Teach Computing Curriculum
The Teach Computing Curriculum contains everything you need to teach computing at key stages 1 to 4, including lesson plans, slides, worksheets, homework and assessment. Units of work are available starting with block-based coding for younger learners, before moving into text-based coding using Python. Click here to visit the Teach Computing Curriculum.
A Code Club is an extracurricular coding club for 9- to 13-year-olds. Your learners can use free, step-by-step project guides to create programming projects, games, animations, and web pages using Scratch, Python, or HTML/CSS. Click here to find out more about Code Clubs.
Upskilling your subject knowledge and pedagogy around coding has never been easier, the National Centre for Computing Education (NCCE) has a wide variety of CPD courses focused around just that. CPD is available face-to-face, through live-remote sessions and online courses. Click here to find out more about our teacher CPD available.
Physical computing allows students to experience computing in a hands-on way, bringing their coding experience to life. They can tackle real-world problems in an engaging manner, using sensors, motors and output displays. Did you know that NCCE Computing Hubs now have loanable computing kits, consisting of Crumbles, micro:bits and Raspberry Pi Pico’s? Click here to find out more information about Computing Physical Kits.
Have you used any of these in your classroom, or have alternative suggestions that you could share with others? Then, please do share via this thread, we look forward to hearing about them.