Creative Coding

Creativity in the elementary classroom flourishes when students actively engage in dynamic problem solving, flexible thinking, and collaborative storytelling focused on doing what engineers and computer scientists actually do. This series of lessons encouraged second-grade students at a public elementary school to think and act creatively. Using modular robots, students first uncovered key ideas in computational thinking, science concepts, and engineering design to create robots that can sense, think, and act in various ways. After experimenting with different designs, students created a story that could be performed by their robots and shared these stories with their peers and families. In this article, we provide sample lessons that showcase how teachers can harness young students' creativity and imagination to support deeper learning.