Do you "Code"?  We do!
This week (December 9th-13th) was Computer Science Education Week, a week dedicated to showing students K-12 the importance of computer science education.  Organized by code.org, the goal was to get 10 million students of all ages (and adults) to participate in the hour of code. 

According to code.org, "90% of K-12 schools in the U.S. do not teach computer science."  Los Altos School District, thanks to funding from LAEF, is fortunate enough to be in the 10% of U.S. Schools that are offering every student the opportunity to learn computational thinking through the STEM and the 6th grade C-STEM program.

Throughout the week, students at Springer and all of LASD participated in computational thinking/coding lessons.  During lunch, Mrs. Regan combined forces with Ms. Craddock for four days of lunchtime coding. The computer lab was packed with students from 1^st grade to 6^th grade writing code. Even parents like Kevin Mszanowski, Lei Zhou, and Veronique Gobry brushed up on their coding skills to join in on the fun!

Some links to coding programs we are using at Springer:

Kinder- Bee bots and the bee bot app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bee-bot/id500131639?mt=8

1st and 2nd grade: Daisy the Dinosaur: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/daisy-the-dinosaur/id490514278 OR Hopscotch: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hopscotch-coding-for-kids/id617098629?mt=8

3rd-5th grade: Scratch: http://scratch.mit.edu/

6th grade: c-STEM curriculum using KhanAcademy coding lessons with JavaScript.

"Everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer…because it teaches you how to think."- Steve Jobs