STEM Education

CoderZ Intros Elementary Grade Coding Course

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 05/11/20

Education technology company CoderZ has introduced a new course for students in grades 2-5 to learn how to program. The new CoderZ Adventure offers 50 missions where students learn how to program virtual robots and practice math as they navigate through various locations, including "Frozen Island," "Lost City," and "Candy Town." The company, known for its gamified Cyber Robotics courses for older students, provides the curriculum behind the Amazon Future Engineer program.

The newest course has seven modules with activities covering about 10 hours of learning:

• Basic navigation for driving and turning using Drive and Turn blocks;

• Arithmetic practice for addition, subtraction and division;

• Measuring distances and using the Wait block and Repeat Loops;

• Geometry exercises with angles and parallel lines;

• More geometry, covering the radius of a circle;

• A practice exercise during which students draw on a virtual sketchpad using all the skills learned previously; and

• An explore mode to measure angles and radii, where students plan the optimal route to complete a mission as quickly and efficiently as possible, given a time limit.

The program includes a teacher guide, the solutions and reporting on student progress.

A free trial is available on the CoderZ website.