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There is a new activity offering for students at Buchanan Intermediate and Cedar Ridge Intermediate. The Youth Coding League is a competitive, fully-packaged extracurricular program for middle school students, using Google's Computer Science (CS) First curriculum.
Coders (students) work their way individually through CS First’s instructional videos that teach basic computer science concepts and create projects to apply that knowledge using Scratch. Scratch is the world’s largest coding community for children and a coding language with a simple visual interface that allows young people to create digital stories, games and animations. These projects are scored by the staff at the Youth Coding League and teams from across the country are then ranked based on their average score.
"This year's project theme is Music and Sound, so all of the projects have elements of logical thinking and creativity," says Buchanan Intermediate's Coding Adviser, Tracie Gones.
As of Monday, Cedar Ridge Intermediate is ranked 9th and Buchanan Intermediate is ranked 11th out of over 60 Youth Coding League teams. The Youth Coding League has a regular season and a postseason. The postseason is equivalent to a team going to districts, sectionals or state. "These students will compete individually and as a team this semester, and a new team will form and compete in the Spring League," says Cedar Ridge Intermediate's Coding Adviser, Amy Vejraska.
Both Coding Clubs meet on Monday's after school to collaborate, improve their projects and compete. "I'm very proud of our teams so far. They are really having a great time and learning a lot," says Adviser Gones.