The Courier-Post featured an article recently that was picked up by the Associated Press and appeared in the Washington Times, Miami Herald, and more…
Moorestown Friends School teaches young students coding
MOORESTOWN – Third-grader Matthew Will went to the front of the class and sat on the floor next to a robot named Beebot.
He pushed some buttons, sending codes to the bumblebee-shaped robot to carry out certain commands. His mission was to get Beebot to move two spaces forward in a taped maze on the carpeted floor, then three spaces to the left. The robot did just that.
It wasn’t just fun and games, though. It was a part of a first-year Lower School coding program at Moorestown Friends School for its younger students, which includes preschool up to fourth grades.
More than 220 students – some as young as 3-years-old – are in Liz Kahn’s coding classes.
“It’s been fun; I like the robots,” Matthew said.
Said classmate Gianna Berkowitz: “It’s really fun. We get to play a lot of cool games. Coding is a really fun way to learn. It’s like you get to code robots. I like robots. You can do a bunch of stuff with robots.”
The program evolved from a school-wide strategic planning process that identified possible additions and alterations to the curriculum in the areas of 21st century skills and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). Read more…