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Code Haven Curriculum

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Official Docs: Quick Start

An Open Source Curriculum

Why Go Online?

Code Haven's mission is to inclusively increase access to computer science education in middle schools. For the most part, this mission is realized through our classroom model. This year, we've partnered with 7 classrooms around New Haven, and every Friday, a team of 6–8 mentors goes into each classroom with a specialized curriculum. Throughout the semester, we cover the basics––if-statements, loops, variables, and the coordinate plane––and build to a final project, where students create an Android app to present at our end-of-term Project Fair.

Throughout the year, we have a few other events that help us achieve this mission. We run a Demo Day, which brings students to Yale's campus to hear from faculty speakers and student presenters. Additionally, we run a Teach Tech conference (click here to learn more), where we present our curriculum, various "unplugged activities" we deploy in the classroom, and have speakers on topics ranging from "Why You Should Teach CS" to "Self-Selection Bias in Computer Science." This conference allows us to reach far more students than our 7 classrooms allow, even if it was only those who could travel to Yale's campus on a Saturday morning.

However, the teachers who attended our conference wanted more - they wanted to have access to what we teach in the classrooms. Especially now, with a global pandemic forcing everyone to stay home, having access to a starter CS curriculum online seems more timely than ever.

Our Project

We have talked a lot about the motivations for what we have created, but what actually have we published? We started by publishing the first 7 weeks of our curriculum, taught entirely in MIT Scratch. Through the course of these lessons, students cover the basics, from variables to if-statements to loops, and end up developing a basic maze-game by the end of it.

Each week is completely available online. We provide several links atop the page:

  • Lesson plans: A quick snapshot of how to structure the lesson. This is also available in more detail, to see what our mentors are thinking minute-by-minute.

  • Worksheets (and solutions): Printable sheets that students fill out as they go through the material.

  • Presentations: PowerPoint slides that accompany each lesson.

We hope that these resources will prove helpful to teachers, as well as any 5th-8th grade students who are trying to get started with coding!