How to use SMARTboards to teach programming to children

1. Teaching Programming with
SMARTboards
By Nora Husani

2. A lesson plan...
This is an example of a lesson
plan slide I found on teaching
drag and drop programming to
middle school students with a
SMARTboard
The students would be able to fill
in the boxes on the SMARTboard
and “run the code” to see what it
would do!

4. Passion for Programming
I chose this lesson plan because I have a huge passion for teaching kids how to
code! I started a club here at Miami where we teach local 3rd-5th graders how to
code every single week!
After learning about SMARTboards I thought that they would be a great resource
for teaching kids to code!
Target Learners: I would use this lesson plan for elementary school students (4th
and 5th grade)
Subject Area: Computer Science

5. Lesson Plan from SMART Exchange
The coding and programming blocks lesson plan I chose can be found at:
http://exchange.smarttech.com/details.html?id=7001f302-29f2-4caf-907a-
ff574ee43533

6. How to use the resources
● Lesson plan allows for students to interact with the SMARTboard by filling in
the blanks in the coding “blocks” with their own code!
● The students would then run the code to see what it does!

7. Alterations/Changes to Lesson Plan
● I would add a warm up/brain teaser section to get the kids thinking about
programming and problem solving before we dived into the actual coding
● I would have a pre-discussion on what the kids thought programming was
● In addition to using the SMARTboard I would have the kids act out what the
code is doing before they run it on the SMARTboard
● I would add some summary questions after we had finished the activity to
review what we had learned

8. Universal Design
● Large font, easier to read
● Audio features (helpful for those who cannot read or see)
● Discussion portions for those who learn better through talking
● Hands on portion for those who learn better through doing
● https://scratch.mit.edu/ offers the same lesson plans that you can do without a
SMARTboard if you do not have accesss to one!

9. Other ways to teach kids to code!
I discovered that there are many other resources to teach kids to code besides
SMARTboards:
● https://code.org/
● http://www.sphero.com/
● http://codemonkeyplanet.com/