Interesting, how do you motivate the kids to want to learn?
That’s one of those questions like “how do you play the violin” :-) There’s no trick, you do it the hard way. I give lots of tiny exercises that are solvable but mildly challenging (typing, arithmetic, 2D coordinates, loops, etc). I make some simple game that fits in a screen of code, make the kids type it in from paper, then they naturally come up with tweaks and new features and add them with my help, so everyone ends up with a personalized game to show off. And so on.
(Why typing code from paper? Because kids start out unable to type. They need to practice it each lesson.)
The hardest part is getting the difficulty right, otherwise the kids run out of focus in 15 minutes and the rest of the lesson is wasted, or they solve everything too fast and get bored as well. I still get it wrong more than half the time, but when it works it feels great.
That’s one of those questions like “how do you play the violin” :-) There’s no trick, you do it the hard way. I give lots of tiny exercises that are solvable but mildly challenging (typing, arithmetic, 2D coordinates, loops, etc). I make some simple game that fits in a screen of code, make the kids type it in from paper, then they naturally come up with tweaks and new features and add them with my help, so everyone ends up with a personalized game to show off. And so on.
(Why typing code from paper? Because kids start out unable to type. They need to practice it each lesson.)
The hardest part is getting the difficulty right, otherwise the kids run out of focus in 15 minutes and the rest of the lesson is wasted, or they solve everything too fast and get bored as well. I still get it wrong more than half the time, but when it works it feels great.