Resilience and Coding
As club members progress through the coding exercises they are learning a lot of syntax and patterns, they finally reach a point where the puzzles in the book become more challenging. No longer are they able to quickly power through a puzzle by entering command after command with no forethought. The exclamations of how easy it is have changed to whispers of this is hard.
This is a time to pause and have a talk about resiliency and how it plays a part in coding. Remind the members of what tools they have learned to help them solve the puzzles: commands, for-loops, if-else-if conditional coding, and logical operators. Explain to the members that professional coders do not just jump in to tackle a large project, instead they examine what needs to be done and what tools can they use to most effectively solve the problem.
I like to show this video <https://youtu.be/sKpBJjsZ7EE?feature=shared> to remind member what resiliency is. We then review what resources that the members have that they can use when they encounter a problem that they cannot currently solve.
Review the previous lesson.
Step away from the iPad and reflect on what they have learned and how they can apply it to this problem.
Seek help from another club member.
Seek help from the club help desk.
Finally seek help from club leadership.
Reminding the students what resources they have to solve a problems helps to build the club community, but also give them members the confidence to know that even if they do get stuck there are ways from them to get unstuck.
Club Curriculum Update
After going through the different books and lessons myself I have decided to alter our curriculum. I am having my students got through Everyone can Code Puzzles, then Everyone Can Code 1 and 2, and then Blu’s Adventure and then Getting Started with Apps and Keep Going with Apps. Finally, students can complete different Playgrounds for different features that they may want to include in the app.
While Learning to Code 1 and 2 repeat some of the lessons learned in Getting Started with Code, it goes further and has the student practice each skill multiple times. Giving them more examples as to how the technique can be used.