EU Code Week 2019 at Primary school ”Josip Kozarac” in Soljani, Croatia

Publication date: December 16, 2019

By Marina and Adrijana, Code Week Teachers in Croatia

The students from grades 1 to 8 of our Primary school ”Josip Kozarac” in Soljani (Croatia) participated in EU Code Week 2019 with 13 different online and offline activities organized by their computer science teacher Marina Blaževac and English teacher Adrijana Roždijevac. The school joined Code Week 4 All Challenge with its own code (cw19-AqkVi) which included 12 different activities and workshops (2 other Croatian schools from Vukovar and Gunja also joined us), as well as with the code originating from Portugal (cw19-kOREN). Lower-primary classes (grades 1 to 4) participated in various unplugged activities, while upper-primary classes (grades 5 to 8) participated mostly in online activities, as well as in some offline activities.

 

 

The 1st-graders had a lot of fun with their first coding experience by playing an unplugged TPR activity Colour Code Hunt in order to learn the names of colours in English. The students had to code their way across the grid on the floor to reach the colour they chose by listening to the teacher’s instructions (left, right, up and down). As they got familiar with the English expressions, the students themselves gave instructions to other students and created their own codes. The game was an absolute hit at school because, even though it was meant for 1stgraders only, the students from all grades ended up playing it.

 

 

Apart from taking part in Colour Code Hunt, the students from grades 2 and 3 also discovered coding with Pixel art and activity ”Let’s code a boat!”. During this unplugged activity, students had to use the given code to draw and colour a boat on the grid paper. Additionally, the 3rd-graders also created a traditional Slavonian towel by colouring the pixels.

 

 

The 4th-graders also took part in an unplugged activity but they used coding to solve math problems (addition and subtraction) to reveal hidden images of different emoji.

 

 

The students from grades 5 were introduced to binary code alphabet in order to write their names in code by colouring in the boxes in the provided grid. During another activity, they worked with binary images where they had to figure out how to encode provided images into binary in such a way that another team can use the code to figure out what images they selected. The 5th-graders also learned how to program micro:bits to show icons, numbers and text on the screen, as well as different animations in Minecraft. Paying Tetris was also a fun experience for them.

 

 

Our 6th-grade students used Quiver 3D Augmented Reality colouring application for printing, colouring and watching their drawings of different countries and flags in 3D on their mobile phones. They used this opportunity to connect this activity to their eTwinning project called ”The Travelling Mascot” by drawing the flags of the partner countries involved in the project. Watching
different animals move and make sounds in 3D was also an interesting experience for them. Another activity was ”Happy maps” where the students had a simple task of getting the “flurb” to the fruit across the given map by using the arrows provided. The students practised writing precise instructions as they work to translate instructions into the symbols provided which help them gain experience reading and writing in shorthand code. Their final activity was programming the mBots to follow the given map and do different actions such as change the colour of their lights and stop at a certain spot by coding in mBlock.

 

 

The 7th-grade students played Minecraft and in that way learned about programming and coding. They build different worlds in Minecraft using MakeCode application and programming their characters to do different actions.

 

 

The students from grade 8 took on Tetris Challenge and played Tetris which helped them with their concentration and logical thinking, as well as combinatorics.

 

 

The students from English Club (grades 6 to 8) also participated in EU Code Week by coding with Scratch and creating animated e-postcards from Croatia. Here are some of the e-card they created: Makarska https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/337395069 and Osijek’s cathedral https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/337395989.

 

 

Our students had so much fun participating in EU Code Week and realizing how easy coding can be and that everyone can do it. We are looking forward to the next year’s EU Code Week and new coding activities.