Just before Christmas, 24 pupils from the boys’ and girls’ Schools joined to complete a coding project to further enhance their ICT skills. Hosted by the Boys’ school, the students aged 9-11 teamed up in pairs and were initially tasked with decomposing a ‘flappy bat’ game, considering the various types of code they might require so as to make their own version. The cadets could then create their game for a specific purpose or target audience, including progressive challenges such as changing levels through broadcasting and introducing a score system. Pupils were then encouraged to continue with their project on Office 365 before submitting their final versions.

The projects completed were extremely impressive, many to a very high standard, and evidenced the students’ excellent level of engagement and the development of their computational thinking. Their ability to combine logic and creative thought to solve the problems posed was particularly impressive and all students made great progress.

The main highlight however, was observing the boys and girls collaborate so effectively throughout the project. For many of the pupils this was one of their first experiences of working with a peer from another school. It proved to be a learning opportunity far greater than just ICT. 

We really look forward to the next collaborative project later this term. 

 

Here are a couple of reflections from the boys on their experiences.

 
 
 

“It was really fun working with someone of the opposite gender and coding together. She pointed out some of my mistakes and I also shared with her some new things. I enjoyed the first little task we did when we were matching ICT into old and new because some were difficult. We adapted the game on the board into a new version and it was enjoyable because we had to work together with someone we had never met before. Overall, it was a great experience and I would love for it to happen again.”

Saul Grenfell

 

 

“Yesterday, I went to a coding activity with the girls’ school and it was extremely fun. We did a lot of arguing with the girls and at first we hardly agreed. I was paired with a girl called Sophie Sanders. I enjoyed the first activity which was an old or new sheet. The flappy bat game was extremely hard to code and really pushed me but we did well in the end. Instead of a bat, we had a taco! I learnt a lot of new things from her and she learnt a lot of things from me. I learnt how to make the background move and how to make a sprite automatically go down when you do not click the space bar. This was an extremely memorable experience that I will not forget and I really hope to do it again in the future.”

Jack Clapper