Club Spotlight — February
Meet Anne, leader and volunteer at Sanctuary Point Library Code Club
Tell us about your Code Club
We are a Coding Club that meets on Wednesdays during school terms at Sanctuary Point Library in the beautiful Shoalhaven region on the south coast of New South Wales. Our Coders are aged between 8 and 11 years but sometimes younger siblings are encouraged to join in the fun. Our club was established in 2019 so our original coders are now in high school.
Why did you start a Code Club?
I decided to start a club because coding looked fun and is an important skill for kids to learn. I taught myself to code in Scratch and asked our library manager to buy me some laptops and our Code Club was born!
I keep coming back to Code Club because
Coding is still fun and it’s amazing to see how quickly the kids pick it up. Even with no coding experience it only takes weeks before they are coding games and animations without much assistance needed.
My Code Club highlight
My favourite thing is seeing kids go from not being able to code to thinking about their projects — adding their own enhancements and really understanding the coding elements. Although it can be challenging to help them add what they want — sometimes it’s a bit too ambitious. :D
My tips for running a club
Don’t be too scared to try coding — the kids will learn with you. Don’t be too concerned with end results, it’s all about having fun. We always end our session by playing with the Dash robots or logging on to Scratch to see what other coders have created. Geometry Dash is a big favourite.
How we share and celebrate our work
We have a Scratch Studio where we can share work and I email projects to the parents — like Mother’s Day and Christmas Cards. The kids are great at supporting each other and praising each other’s work. They are also great at helping each other, giving tips and debugging each other’s projects.
What our coders think of Code Club
It’s great when the kids successfully finish a project and say ‘that was so fun’. The parents tell me their kids love Code Club and can’t wait for Wednesdays. Being a local librarian in a small town, I often see older kids that used to come to Code Club and they always tell me they miss it.
The coding our club does
We mainly use Scratch.
Favourite Code Club resources
‘Stress Ball’ is a fantastic beginner project. I always start off newbies with this project.
Thank Ann, for sharing your club with us.
Happy coding!
Kaye
Manager, Code Club Australia
