Microsoft Coding Masterclasses Autumn 2021
Monday 11th October 2021 and the w/c Monday 6th December 2021. The hour-long sessions will be delivered entirely by experts at Microsoft via the Microsoft Teams Live platform every morning during the week from 9am-10am. After a difficult year punctuated by lockdowns, this week will provide children with an opportunity to have fun whilst developing their digital skills and learning how to code!
By the end of the week, they will have learnt how to make a video game, their own app and how to use coding to solve puzzles; they will be well on their way to becoming expert coders!
The themed sessions provide some important links across the curriculum; for example, the Voyage Aquatic session could inspire class science sessions on the properties of solids, liquids and gasses, geography lessons on oceans or even English lessons according with the theme of rivers and oceans. Moreover, after the sessions, children will be able to use the practical coding skills they have learnt at home to teach friends and family.
The practicalities:
- Schools can nominate KS2 classes, ideally from years 5 or 6, to take part in these coding programme
- The sessions will be carried out via Microsoft Teams Live, facilitated by specialists from the Microsoft Experience Centre Team. The teacher merely needs to broadcast the session on an interactive screen to the class; ideally, all children in the class would also have access to their own laptops or computers (iPads work less well) so that they can each take part in the coding activities via the websites which will be provided.
- Each teacher can register for each day of the October sessions using the links provided in the attached programme menu. (Note: teachers only need to register themselves (not each child) and the links for the December course will be sent out in due course)
- During the sessions, teachers can send in comments and questions to the Microsoft team via a chat function, which will be monitored by the Microsoft facilitators
- We will be sending round short feedback forms at the end of the week and it would be great if teachers and students could fill this out to help us improve our offer
