Getting Started with CodeHS Elementary

Okay. Well, we're just going to get started. Hello and welcome to the CodeHS Elementary free trial webinar. I'm Jennifer Maym. I'm an elementary curriculum developer. I'm located in very rural Kansas. And helping me today is Katie. And I'll let her introduce herself. My name is Katie Williams, also an elementary curriculum developer, and I'm based in San Antonio, Texas.
So, if you have any questions at all today or you need any support, feel free to put that in the questions in the chat and Katie will make sure that that gets back to me as I'm presenting and we get all of your questions answered and help you in the best way that we can cuz we really want you to be successful with getting started with your free trial. So, the first thing our goal today is well first off, have you even started using codes to teach in your classroom? And do you have any questions so far? What can we help you get started with today to make this successful for you? So, I'll give you a minute to put those thoughts in the chat.
Or maybe that's even you putting what you teach so we can kind of gear you or direct you towards a pathway or some lessons that might help you. Okay. So what does code provide? If this is your first time looking at it, we have a full elementary curriculum. We have ready to go lessons that are pre-built that everything that you need to be successful is already there and done for you. You can literally walk into your classroom and teach our lessons. You can either teach them yourself or we have them ready to go, which means the developers are essentially teaching the lesson for you in pre-recorded videos. Throughout these lessons, there's a ton of engaging pieces, interactive activities, check for understandings. and I think one of my favorite parts is from being a computer science teacher. We have two pathways. We have a computer science pathway and we have an interdisciplinary. So, if you're looking to incorporate grade level subjects into your classroom, you can do that. You can add interdisciplinary lessons or an interdicciplinary course to what you're teaching. we vertically align to computer science standards. We have robotics lessons. We have customizable PD and a lot of implementation and support along the way. So anytime if you have questions, you find a bug, you just need support, our support team is so great and helpful and a lot of times if support doesn't know how to help you, those questions come back to us and we will make sure you get the support you need. So we have a wide variety of lessons. This is our Here we go. This is all of the elementary lessons we have. We have over 400 some lessons. So, say specifically I am a third grade teacher. I can filter by the third grade lessons. But let's say I'm looking for third grade computer science. Ooh, but I really want to cover social studies. I can use these fun filters to help me find what I need for my students. If you have specific robotics in your classroom, you can see search by tool. We have everything from Scratch, Scratch Junior to tons of different robots that we create lessons for that are ready to go, ready for you to implement right into your classroom.
And then you can also search by concept.
So if you're looking for maybe something on digital citizenship or debugging or your students are struggling with a specific skill, you can search lessons here. and then once you find the lessons, you can favorite them. As you look at lessons, there's lots of things here to help you. So, it starts by the subject. The subject is the blue. It's your computer science. It could be digital literacy. It could be social studies. And then these next ones tell you what tool you're using. So, like this specific lesson here is using Scratch and it's also available in Spanish. All of our elementary lessons are available in both English and Spanish. So, Spanish speaking students, we have them covered. Then it tells the grade level.
So, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth.
That's the grade that we recommend this lesson for. and then it's ready to go, which means the videos are there. The videos are ready. Sometimes you'll see like this lesson here. This talks about a concept. So, you're covering loops in this lesson. This one would be Tinkercad. So, basically everything is here to help you figure out what lessons are best for your students.
Now, as you are creating your course, and we'll go over that in one second, but as you're creating your section, we want to make sure you know where to start with our lessons. So, we have pathways built out kind of like a scope and sequence. and this is where you know where to start. So, right here, kindergarten computer science, I can start right here at section one. And this is unplugged exploration. And then I can go to two scratch junior exploration. And we have these for every single grade level. The green means it's a project, so it's a multi-day lesson.
The blue is just a one-day lesson. And our red is usually something that's optional, like a digital literacy or sometimes it is even like a review. So if you didn't do third grade with us and you're jumping in at fourth grade, you could do welcome to codes. If you've already done third grade, those are just things you can skip. And we also have this available for interdisciplinary. So if you are going the route of incorporating subject areas, here are some options. So it's not as flowy, but it's here's the math lessons and here's where I would start. Here's your science lessons and here's where I would start.
And my favorite thing, once you're logged in, this over here will show you everything you need to be successful.
This is your sections. This is how you find all the lessons I just showed very slowly, but I'm going to stick here with re just kidding. I'm going to stick here with resources. Our resource page is embedded with lots of information. So if you have questions, if you have, you want additional resources, you're thinking, hm, are there coding in the wild articles that relate to jobreated skills, we have those. If you're looking for peer reviews, we have those here. So embedded in our resource page is anything else you might need to supplement or just to be aware of. We have our interactive activity library. If you're looking for a few minutes at the beginning of class, like a warm-up activity, those are embedded in here. And then probably some of my favorite are these coding in the wild articles, which really helps your students to relate to real people and see real coding in the wild computer science jobs. and then there some of these also have lessons attached to them. And again, these are available in English and Spanish.
So now I'm going to show you how to create a section. So if we go back to our slides, if you are not logged in, this would be a really good time to get logged in if you want to follow along or do that. So while that's happening, do we have any questions yet, Katie?
We do not have any questions yet, but I'll let you know if we do. Okay. So, I'll give people some time to log in. Once you're logged in as an elementary teacher, again, you'll see this sidebar here. To get started, you can click sections. And this is where you can create a new section. So, I would title this. It depends, I guess, how you want to title your class. If you're a computer science teacher, maybe you're titling them with the name of the teacher and a grade level. So, I'm just going to call this fourth grade for now. And then I can import from Google Classroom. So, if you're using Google Classroom, you can click import here and import your class straight from there.
And then I'm going to select a course.
So, I would select fourth grade computer science and create. Now, there aren't students added yet. I could add those students. I can import them from Google. And then your students have different signon options.
So you can choose to sign on with Google. You can choose picture passwords. You can choose there are a lot of different options you can choose here. So you have Google, click on their name, QR code, and then a picture password, which is helpful for a lot of our young learners. So I'm going to go back to my classes here.
Once you're in, this is like your teacher navigation bar up here. This is what you're seeing. so I'm going to I'm going to do third grade. So, here's my roster for third grade. This was just in here as students. Yours would look like your name and then lessons. So, when I click on lessons, this is all the lessons in the course. And you'll see right now that these are gray because I don't have them visible. What is visible is this one here at the bottom which is a seasonal winter program and I can tell it's visible because it is colorful and that's what our friends will see in the student view. Now you can add lessons.
So say you love this course and but you're thinking hm I'm really looking for something for a winter celebration around the world. I wonder if there's a lesson like that. This is where you can go and add lessons. Or if it is you want to focus on a math concept this week, you could add a lesson and that's where you do that. To have these visible for students, you just go through right here and click visible. Now you can see it.
Now students will see that in their sandbox progress. This shows you your students progress. This is how you can see your students work. Sorry, my computer's going really slow. So, I can see right here that this lesson that I assigned, these students have opened it. And this helps you up here. So, there's a key open, unopened, or most recently opened.
so I can see what students have opened it. And if I want to, I can click on their name. I can click on it here. And I can click on the lessons at the top. So, our lessons have, like I said, we we called these ready to go. So, what that means is when you get to a new lesson, this is what it looks like. This is what your students would see if you're projecting this on your board and teaching a lesson. So, when we say ready to go, that means as I click through these slides at the top, here are our videos. Today's lesson is scouts. And like I said, it's us teaching your students. So you can click I'm just going to scroll through here so we don't have to listen to me. But you can see we're demoing here and guiding your students to be successful in this lesson. After each video, you have the option to push students to the program.
And you can also demo this up here. Now, if I'm demonstrating this for my students, you'll see this yellow thing up here. It doesn't any changes I make will not save from day to day. So, you would have to make this in your own sandbox if it's a two-day project. So, this is where you can really demo this lesson for students if you just watch that video and kind of want to show them a little more. You can also push this to students, which means on their computer, it's going to push them to this starter code so that they're all in the right spot. You know, we all have those students that get distracted and find their way to the wrong place sometimes. push the students really helps bring your students back to where they need to be. You can also copy the link or view the solution. The solution is the sample code and that's what students are trying to accomplish today. So that's a good strategy too to start by showing them the sample program of hey this is what you are creating today. Sometimes our lessons already show that but then you can kind of give them a goal of what students are trying to reach.
One thing I love about our ready to go lessons is there's this tab right here where you can click and find things. So if I want to go to chapter 1, if I want to go to the starter code, I can scroll the whole way down and go to this interactive activity. Interactive activities are a way to check for understanding for students. You can do this as whole class or again you can push this to students.
So, if I click right here, and maybe I want to do this as the whole class, or I can push this to students and have them do it individually, and it'll go right to their computers, or you can copy and share the link with students using your LMS. So, again, this is a computer science lesson. These tools are all here to help guide you to know what this lesson's about. This lesson tells me right here, it's a 45minute lesson. And I get it.
Sometimes your class period is not that long. If it's a 30 minute lesson and or it's a if you only have 30 minutes, you can look down here in the lesson plan or in our lesson prep notes and it'll tell you how to shorten this lesson to accommodate the times you need for your classroom. Lesson prep just gives you any information that you might need to know prior to teaching this lesson to students. So sometimes that could be print out a handout for each student, figure out how you want to group your students. So this is where I would always check prior to projecting my lesson or teaching my lesson so I can be set up for success. Right here it says this lesson is part of a sequential storydriven unit. And then it leads you to the objective. So this is what students are going to accomplish today in this lesson. Over here on this sidebar we have our coding exercises. Again this is the starter code which is also embedded into the lesson. You can push that to students. And then we also have our sample program right here. Again, we have the push to students option. We have our copy link option. And under lesson resources, it's anything you could use throughout this lesson. So, this lesson specifically has an interactive activity which is right here. So, that link is on the side. And probably one of my favorite features is printable code instructions. I'm going to click on this in a second cuz it will I think it takes me to that page. So, we'll come back to that. We have our lesson plan PDF. If you want to print it, hold it so you know what you're doing. You'll see in our lesson plans, we break it down by time. We guide teachers in what to say.
We have common challenge questions here.
So, how do students determine the coordinate location of scout? That could be an issue that they might have. Well, here's an answer. We give you options for differentiation. And at the bottom, we also provide you with resources, assessment, rubric, and then we have in our resources page some other ways if you need to grade every single lesson, some ways to make that easier for you.
Maybe that's walking around with this rubric on a clipboard. So, use that resources page as a resource as you're looking to assess students. We have every single lesson has a video which is basically all the small videos broken down but this is all together. And then at the bottom of this lesson page we have what we call like our teacher slides. So this is the same slide deck from above but you'll notice there's no embedded video. So, if you want to teach this lesson yourself, which this one's a story based lesson, so I would use the videos, but you have options. if you want to teach it yourself, this is right here for you.
And then you can guide students as you go along. And this slide deck without the videos is what's also available in Spanish for students. And then below it is where we have the standards for the lesson. Now, printable code instructions. So a lot of times, you know, as computer science teachers, as a STEM teacher, whatever your role is, we have students who are at all different abilities and not always the support we need. So these are super helpful in many ways. Some ways I would use our printable code instructions. If you have students who need that extra support, they need to see step by step, I would print this out and give this give this to them. some of your maybe struggling students, make sure they have a copy of this so they can follow along and match the blocks as you work. So instead of having to look at the board and try to follow along, they can have this right in front of them. If you have paras who aren't super comfortable with computer science and are trying to go around the classroom and help students, but might not actually know where they need to be, this could be a great resource for them. I know I always had some special ed parents coming in and out of my classroom. They were different and varied. This is something I would have given them because this would have helped them better help the students they were serving. But also, as a teacher teaching this in the classroom, you don't always have that same slide up there. Sometimes it might be something different. This might even be helpful for you walking around your classroom because you have step by steps of what students need to do. And you'll see as you scroll down here, this is everything students need. And that might even help you to help your students as you come around because if you have a if you're on maybe slide three here and someone's still on slide one and stuck, you can hold this in your hand, go help them, and make sure everyone's kind of being successful with what they need to do. the next thing I'm going to show you is the student view. So, this is what students are seeing. So, I showed in that first grade or sorry, that third grade classroom that was under Mrs.
Mayhem third. Here's what it looks like.
So, this is going to be the lessons that I assigned the student. So, here they have the design a snowman starter and here they have the picture of Scout Scratch Expedition part one because that's the two visible lessons. But you'll see right down here students first created project. This means this student created something on their own maybe in free time. So you'll have kind of some separation here of this is what their assignment is and this is what they did on their own. You'll see this box is open and that just means that this student has opened it, created it, worked on it and then this is a present because it's just a sign and it hasn't been opened yet.
So, I'm going to go back to over here and make sure we didn't miss anything. So, we have the all lessons page. Go right back through this. So, we have our all lessons page. we went over how to add lessons. You can do that at the bottom of your page. On the navigation bar on the side, we have the teacher playground. This is where you can complete projects that you've assigned. You can create your own open-ended projects and send out starter code to students. So, if you want to create your own kind of lessons, this is where you can do that in your playground. And then you can assign that to students as well. So, we went over the student view.
I didn't cover this part. This plus sign here is a their sandbox. So, anytime they want to create something that's not something you assign that you have that option right there.
all of our lessons are standardbased objectives. They all have objectives.
They all have differentiation. They all have extensions. lots of different ways just to help your students. So, we went over student progress. We have the home icon to view your students work. You can click click the drop down here to kind of see different students if you want to switch between to see who's done what, especially for if you're grading. on the top of the progress tab, you can click on the lesson and it will give you a breakdown of what all of your students have created right here. So, that's just kind of a fun way to compare. And now, resources and support.
So, we kind of went over this resources page. is one of my favorite tools that we have. You can watch videos, read articles, and really learn so many more things. there's also extra resources in here like peer reviews, self assessment. So, if you have those standards and you want to hold your students accountable, like self- assessments, we have it for kindergarten through fifth grade. So, it's kindergarten through sixth grade. So, we have it something for everybody. Okay. So in that navigation bar there is also support. you can contact us, find knowledgebased articles. So if you have a question or an issue and maybe you don't want to go to support yet, you can browse different topics there. So maybe you're looking for something on how to help your Spanish-sp speakaking students, you can click through here. or if you need more information about differentiation. One thing that's great about our codes curriculum is that Scratch and Scratch Junior are embedded right into our platform. So your students aren't navigating somewhere else. So if you've used Scratch, you don't have the like commenting and you can't access the public lessons. So it's a lot safer and yeah, but we still have the great features. So, if you need to switch the language, you can still do that. there's tons of different languages in there. You can switch the the color block still, so it's high contrast or not. So, a lot of the same features are built right in there. But then we have our custom sprites or our custom characters. You'll see Scout appearing many different places either in our sandbox, in our lessons, or just different things. under resources, there's also a teacher forum. So now, does anybody have any questions for us? If so, feel free to put those in the chat. If you have a specific question or want me to cover something else, feel free.
Well, that is all we have for you today.
Thank you so much for joining us. and we hope you have a great experience using our codes platform and lessons.