Digital Technologies

Digital Technologies Leader - Lisa Geary

What does coding look like at St Bernard’s?

At St Bernard’s the students follow a sequential program which gradually builds on students coding skills from offline coding in Prep to designing animations and games in Year 5/6.

Prep

In Prep the students begin learning coding though offline activities with our Beebots. Through hands-on learning they are introduced to the directional language of forwards, backwards left and right. The students then progress to online coding programs where they use drag and drop block coding still using the visuals of directional language. The aim of these programs is to move from one destination to another.

Year 1/2

In Year 1/2 the students move to text within drag and drop blocks. They are introduced to Sprites and the coding blocks are grouped into different functions, such as behaviors, events and conditionals. The students work through structured step by step programs where one function is introduced at a time.

Year 3/4

The Year 3/4 students continue to build on their coding skills by beginning to create simple animations through visual block based coding. They are introduced to conditional blocks, variables and at this level improve their debugging skills. These block based programs help the students learn how programs work and digital solutions are created. In 3/4 the students are encouraged to show more creativity with their coding as the programs are less structured. Some students opt to extend their knowledge by exploring Scratch programming.

Year 5/6

In Year 5/6 the students use the platform Scratch Edu, a more advanced coding platform which gives the students greater control and more creative freedom over their projects. The students design and build their programs from scratch, creating interactive stories, animations and more complex games. At this level the students also have the option of creating their own variable blocks as well as using extension features such as coding text to speech, music and sensing functions. Some students in Year 5/6 also choose to explore python coding.