How to: Run a Session

First things first: you should start your first session by introducing yourself and explaining to your new club members what Code Club is. If the club members don’t already know you, you can also say something about yourself. For example, tell them why you are interested in coding.

Once introductions have been taken care of, there are several different ways to kick off your session. Below are some suggestions for you. Pick one or two.

Don’t spend too long on your introductions. The learners will be keen to get started on the projects! A dynamic short introduction prepares the way for the rest of the session to run smoothly. When clubs start their sessions well, it makes the children excited about the creative opportunities that coding offers, and it helps them develop a resilient approach to problem-solving.

Ideas for kicking off a session:

• Show a completed version of the project. If most children of the group are going to be working on the same project, it’s a good idea to first show them a completed version of it. We provide a link in the completed project in the project instructions.
• Demonstrate a small section of a project. If you’ve worked through a project before the club session, you may have found a section which you think would be worth demonstrating before everyone starts. Spending a few minutes demonstrating skills or ideas at the beginning of the session allows the children to work more independently as the session progresses.
• Look at some online Scratch projects. It can be valuable for the children to spend a few minutes exploring some online projects because it can help them to understand the potential of Scratch and to be inspired. You can focus this activity by suggesting children search around a keyword for projects relating to a particular theme, such as ‘nature’ or ‘holidays’.

Other ideas:

• Name badges. If you don’t already know the club members, you can give them name badges to help you learn their names. Check out the downloads in the Helpful Resources section of your Dashboard for a free template.
• Establish a routine. Many clubs have a routine for the children to follow when they arrive. This often includes tasks such as getting a laptop, collecting login details, setting up their computer, and reviewing what they did last week. After the first two or three sessions, this becomes second nature and frees up the adults helping at the club to answer any individual queries that might come up.
• Talk about how to support each other. Code Clubs work best when adults support children and children support other children. Sometimes you might need to define what this support looks like and get agreement from everyone in the club. It’s a good idea to talk through club rules, such as what to do if you get stuck, and how to test each other’s projects out.

Your session has begun and the club members are working through their projects. So far, so good. The next thing that is likely to happen is that some hands will go up. Following are some ideas on what to do when you look across a room and see a forest of hands.

Don’t feel overwhelmed or like you have to implement all of these suggestions. But incorporating a few of these techniques, or elements of them, will make your life as a facilitator easier and your sessions more relaxed and fun.

The trick is to give children the power and confidence to try and answer their own questions.

Sit together, learn together

Try grouping the children together if they are working on the same project or programming language. It will help them to start collaborating naturally and helping each other out.

Introduce a ‘hands up’ rule

Or rather, a ‘three things before you put your hands up’ rule! Encourage the club members to:

• Check they have completed all the previous steps in the project they are stuck on
• Check the code in the project notes to see how theirs compares
• Work with a partner or friend to try and find the answer

Some educators call this rule C3B4me, or See Three Before Me, to help learners remember that they should try three ways of finding the answer to a question before they put up their hand to ask.

Stop and explain

Sometimes you’ll find that a lot of the children get stuck on the same thing. In this case, you might want to try stopping everyone to explain the answer to the entire group. Alternatively, why not get one of the children who has already figured it out to explain to their peers?

Think about agreeing on an approach for getting everyone’s attention

This could be a whistle, a clap, or raising a hand. Set the rule that the club members should turn off any sound effects on their computer at these times and listen quietly, so that they’ll be able to get back to coding quickly.

Question the question

Of course, if the children still need to ask you for help, that’s fine. But instead of telling them the answer straight away, why not answer their question with a question? For example, if the question is “Can I add this block here to make the code repeat”, you might answer “Why don’t you try and add it and see whether it works”. More often than not, you can guide the child to the solution to their problem without giving them the answer directly — it’s much more satisfying for everyone that way!

Make sure that you give your first session a really clear end, and use this opportunity to establish good routines that will serve you well in future sessions. Following are some ideas about what to do to end a session well.

Give fair warning

The children will be absorbed in coding and making by now, so give them a ten-minute warning before the session wraps up so that the end doesn’t come as a surprise.

Saving work

Make sure the children know how and where to save their work.

Many hands make light work

If there is equipment to put away at the end of the session, get the children to help you tidy it up — this is a great habit for them to get into, and it will save everyone time.

Thank you, and see you soon!

Say well done or thank you at the end of each session. As your sessions progress, you can build in extras at the end, such as show-and-tells, celebrations and celebrating success. More on that follows.

Celebrating success with your club is really important and helps to keep everyone motivated.

Depending on how your Code Club is structured, you could build this into each session, into a session at the end of each term, or you could do it at a yearly celebration.

There are lots of different ways to do celebrate success — here are just a few ideas:

Certificates

Giving certificates works well, because each learner has something with their name on it to take away and show to their friends and family. Make sure everyone gets a certificate, even if it is just for taking part.

Check out the downloads in the Helpful Resources section of your Dashboard for a range of template certificates.

Coder of the week

You could also try giving out a small prize, such as a sticker, for a particular achievement. For example, you could give it to the problem-solver of the week, or the club member who has learned most from a failure.

Motivation

Use these prizes and celebrations as a way of motivating your group. Tell them at the beginning that there are certificates or stickers up for grabs, and remind them that they can work towards these if they are having a tough session.

Show and tell

Another great way of celebrating is with a show-and-tell session. Spending a few minutes at the end of a session on a show-and-tell is great for sharing good ideas amongst your learners and also for helping them feel like a team if they have been working individually.

Before you try it the first time, have a think about how it might work. What technology do you need to make the project visible to everyone in the class? Are you going to give every learner the chance to show their progress or only a few? And if you have only a few to do a show-and-tell, will they be volunteers or will you choose them?

Below are a few ways to run a show-and-tell. However you decide to run the show-and-tell, make sure you keep the atmosphere positive. Think of one positive comment about each project you see, and make sure that every learner who shows off what they’ve done gets a round of applause.

• Every learner takes part. It will take a little time to show and tell with every member of your club, so you could schedule this every six weeks for example.
• Choose some star coders. Alternatively, you could choose two or three ‘star coders’ from the group to show their progress. Remember that these don’t necessarily have to be the club members who have impressive outcomes — they could also be those who’ve solved problems well or who tried to create something innovative or ambitious, even if it didn’t succeed. There’s often much more learning in these situations than in the ones where everything just works.
• Ask for volunteers. If you’d prefer to ask for volunteers for a show-and-tell, then you can do so — just make sure you don’t get the same three keen coders each time!

To better support your young learners in their digital making journey, we've introduced learning paths. Each learning path is a series of six coding projects that are designed to scaffold learners' success in the early stages, and then lets them build upon this learning by providing them more open-ended tasks.

Each path is made up of three different types of projects in a 3-2-1 structure.

• The first three Explore projects introduce learners to a set of skills and knowledge, and provide step-by-step instructions to help learners develop initial confidence. Throughout these projects, learners have lots of opportunity to personalise and tinker with what they’re creating.
• The next two Design projects are opportunities for learners to practise the skills they learned in the previous Explore projects, and to express themselves creatively. Learners are guided through creating their own version of a type of project (such as a musical instrument, an interactive pet, or a website to support a local event), and they are given code examples to choose, combine, and customise. No new skills are introduced in these projects, so that learners can focus on practising and on designing and creating a project based on their own preferences and interests.
• In the final one Invent project, learners focus on completing a project to meet a project brief for a particular audience. The project brief is written so that they can meet it using the skills they’ve learned by following the path up to this point. Learners are provided with reference material, but are free to decide which skills to use. They need to plan their project and decide on the order to carry out tasks.

As a result of working through a path, learners are empowered to make their own ideas and create solutions to situations they or their communities face, with increased independence. And in order to develop more skills, learners can work through more paths, giving them even more choice about what they create in the future.

Our first learning path is 'Introduction to Scratch '. This is an introduction to coding in Scratch for beginners. By completing this path your young learners will add code, costumes, and sounds to sprites as they make animations, a game, an app, and a book.

We've also got a collection of extra projects at each skill level so your young learners can dive in further before moving to the next skill level.

More advanced learning paths to come!

Supporting resources

We've got some great resources that explain each learning path in detail including the learning outcomes, and a certificate of completion to give your students at the end of their journey.

We also have some great resources that you can download to enable your students to track their own progression through key coding concepts, including a fun Bingo Card.

Check out the downloads in the Helpful Resources section of your Dashboard.

There are plenty of ways in which you could share your club members’ work outside the club so that parents, relatives, or your local community can celebrate and enjoy it too.

If you do share work widely, remember to keep in mind the safety of your learners. Below is some advice on how to share young people’s work responsibly.

Scratch & Scratch Studios

If children have a confirmed Scratch account, they can share projects which will then be publicly visible. It’s important to make sure that children (and parents) are aware of the Scratch community guidelines . We recommend printing out a copy and putting it on display at your venue.

A Scratch Studio is a public webpage on which users can display a set of connected projects. Studios are a great way for learners to easily access each other’s projects and learn to comment constructively. You can set up Studios so that anyone can add projects, or you can restrict access to Studios so that only managers can add projects. Only projects that have already been shared can be added to a Studio.

Trinket

The Trinket editor (used for Code Club projects involving Python, HTML/CSS, and the Sense HAT) automatically shares projects online even if accounts are not used. It’s important that learners are aware of this and do not include personal information in their projects.

Club leaders sharing projects

Sometimes it’s appropriate to share projects with parents and the wider community.

The venue may have social media accounts, a website, or a newsletter. It is preferable for the venue to share work, rather than individual volunteers doing so.

It’s important to follow any policies that the venue has in place, such as not sharing full names or identifying young people in photographs, and to check that learners have not shared personal information within projects.

Moreover, it’s good practice to tell learners if you plan to share their projects with a wider audience and to check that they are comfortable with this.

Some of you reading this are already experienced educators or facilitators, but for some of you, Code Club will be the first time you interact with young people in an educational context. So, what should you expect, and how can you prepare?

Here are some top tips for working with 8- to 15-year-olds.

• If you’re feeling nervous, remember this: Code Club–aged children are generally very welcoming to an adult who has come along to help them with coding, so don’t worry — they won’t be trying to catch you out!
• It’s fine to chat with children about things they’re interested in (e.g. football, music, horses), they don’t need to be coding 100% of the time. Children are often motivated by working on projects that are related to their interests, so try and steer their enthusiasm into their coding.
• What’s your name, Miss? Think about what you want the children to call you, and tell them when you introduce yourself. Some volunteers prefer to use their first name, others a more formal Miss/Mister/Doctor.
• Curiosity. Some children are incredibly curious. This is a great characteristic when directed towards coding, but can lead to questions you’d rather not answer. At some point, you’ll probably be asked how much you earn! Don’t be offended, but also don’t feel you have to answer.
• Don’t be afraid to tell children to get on with coding if they are getting distracted too much though — the environment should be fun but also focused on the task in hand.
• You don’t have to know everything. It’s healthy for the learners to know that you yourself don’t know everything, so don’t worry if children ask a question you can’t immediately answer. It’s fine to say “I don’t know, let’s try and find out”.
• When children are working on challenges, or on projects they have come up with, you may find that you don’t immediately understand the problem they have. Get them to describe the problem carefully, and talk through problem-solving techniques. Often children manage to solve their own problems once they explain them to someone else (or even something else!), and if not, you can help them find a first step towards resolving the problem.
• Keeping everyone safe. If children try to discuss things that are not appropriate for their age group (such as video games for older children), then explain that that’s not a suitable subject for Code Club, and let the Club leader know. Make sure you understand the safeguarding rules in operation at your venue. If you’re ever unsure about what to do in a situation, involve the venue host immediately.
• Children move around a lot. They look at what others are making, getting ideas and inspiration. They often invite others to play (i.e. test) their finished projects, and then they make improvements based on feedback they receive. Children get a lot of motivation from seeing others huddled around their computer, playing and enjoying a project they’ve made.
• It can sometimes get loud. Children ask each other questions, and move around the room to help each other out. They test each other’s projects, giving verbal feedback, sharing ideas, or even just having fun with the things they’ve created.
• Children love to play games. If you use online Scratch, in addition to playing each other’s games, they get time to play other Scratch projects online. Obviously it’s important that this doesn’t dominate a club, but it can help children learn lots about what’s possible with Scratch — especially when moving past the basics. Posting their own creations online is also a great opportunity for children to get real feedback from the community.

Creating an outstanding Code Club brings together lots of elements: projects, club members, software, hardware — and the space where you hold your club sessions is important too.

Here are some tips for how you can create a great Code Club:

Club venue
Add a few extra touches to your space to create a great atmosphere for your sessions.

• Lots of clubs print out a ‘Welcome to Code Club’ sign and put it up on their club door. If you can’t leave it up permanently, don’t worry: often clubs laminate the sign or put it in a plastic folder to keep it safe and put it up each week just before their club session starts.
• If you do have more space on your club walls, you could also put up posters about coding for inspiration

Club rules

Even though Code Club is fun and informal, establishing a few common sense ground rules will help to make sure that everyone in the club respects each other and enjoys the sessions as a team.

Having rules doesn’t mean that your club isn’t fun — creating club rules can be the simplest way to make sure that all the club members understand what is expected of them.

If you decide you’d like some club rules, it’s a good idea to discuss these rules together with the club members. Rather than imposing them, ask the young people what they think the club rules should be (you can add your own too).

Then write the rules down and put them up on the wall of the club space so everyone can see them. You can download a handy template from the Helpful Resources section of your Code Club dashboard.

Here are a few rules that you might like to include:

• Respect: speak to each other and treat each other kindly
• Always listen when the club leader asks you to do something
• Put your hand up if you need help, don’t call out
• No running in the club space
• No food and drink in the club space
• Use equipment carefully
• Leave the club space neat and tidy

Learning from success and failure

The best advice we can give you is to always celebrate the wins with each child, relative to them. And if they fail, point out the things they have learnt and achieved and support them to try again.

Stay as positive as possible. People react better to positive encouragement than negativity.

Remember that kids learn from how you behave.

In Australia, we are incredibly lucky to have a diverse culture. In our Code Clubs, we need to remember this and be respectful of every single person’s journey that may be in the room. Even more so, we need to be doing everything we can to empower, include and enable all of our code clubbers.

Here are some tips for creating an inclusive club:

Ask the parent or guardian for some further information about their child

Send out some questions for the caregiver to reflect on with their child to help you, help them.

• What would you like me to know about how you learn best?
• How can I help you to best succeed?
• What can I do to support your learning needs?
• Do you have any access needs you’d like me to know about?

Gender

We want to close the gender gap in STEM and encourage as many girls as possible to get into coding. At your club, you could do this by having girls pictured in promotional material or having female volunteers as role models. Work towards having a 50-50 split between males and females!

Consider using Scratch offline if the internet is an issue

If your club is in a regional or remote area, it may be the case that the internet may be patchy or non-existent. To combat this, look into downloading Scratch offline onto all of your computers.

Have project instructions available in multiple languages

If you're aware that some children in your club speak English as a second language, it could be helpful if you had the projects available in their native language. Our projects are available in a wide range of languages.

Tailor the projects you teach to the children in your club

Perhaps your club has a very diverse representation of nationalities, you can work the flag guessing game into your sessions to learn more about everyone's heritage.

Or perhaps your club has a number of First Nations Australians and you could work with the local community to tailor a project to share their culture with the club. For example, we put together this language quiz together using the Gadigal language of the Eora people.