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A comment on Ask HN: How should I teach code to kids?.

Re:Ask HN: How should I teach code to kids? by hywel on Saturday February 18, 2017 @01:22PM (#13675911)
Depends whether you want to teach code or computer science (and code).

I wrote a book to teach 7-11 year olds to code in Python and Scratch and teach them some computer science along the way - I read a few other books out there first, and there's a lot of "just copy out this code and things will happen", which is exactly what I tried to avoid in this book.

The reviews: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28232614-coding-unlocked#...

The book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013R4OFVA/ref=x_gr_w_bb?i...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: How should I teach code to kids? by josephorjoe on Saturday February 18, 2017 @02:44PM (#13676330)
My son is 8 and started using Scratch at school. He had me install it on my macbook and he created a simple side-scroll game and a program to play the Jingle Bells chorus.

I was impressed with how quickly he went from "just tried this at school" to "leave me alone, Dad, I know what I'm doing here".

Seems like a good intro for kids.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: How should I teach code to kids? by rickyc091 on Saturday February 18, 2017 @03:16PM (#13676464)
You don't have to install Scratch! The old version required you to install it, but these days you just need to use the browser version. https://scratch.mit.edu/
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: How should I teach code to kids? by pbhjpbhj on Saturday February 18, 2017 @04:28PM (#13676787)
Hywel, I notice the blurb says "in line with the new National Curriculum" is that a USA-wide curriculum or is it in another country. I've got kids in that age range in the UK and they don't do any such computing/coding [at school!].
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: How should I teach code to kids? by hywel on Saturday February 18, 2017 @05:31PM (#13677053)
Yeah, the UK National Curriculum says children need to learn a visual language (like Scratch) and then a text based one (like Python). Your kids should be doing visual coding in school from Key Stage 2.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: How should I teach code to kids? by danellis on Saturday February 18, 2017 @06:30PM (#13677271)
In case anyone else was wondering, "Key Stage 2 is the legal term for the four years of schooling in maintained schools in England and Wales normally known as Year 3, Year 4, Year 5 and Year 6, when the pupils are aged between 7 and 11."
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: How should I teach code to kids? by monk_e_boy on Saturday February 18, 2017 @01:34PM (#13675967)
I'm a teacher - scratch and python
[ Parent | on HN ]