Welcome families! This page will help you understand what your student has learned with CS First, how it relates to their education and future, and how you can support them in learning more.
What did my student learn with CS First?
Through CS First, your student has learned the basics of computer coding, which we call coding for short. Computers and code are at the heart of most technologies that we take for granted today—from your smartphone to your car to the systems that control your town’s traffic lights. When people “write code”, they are writing instructions that tell the computer how to do new things.
Just like there are many spoken languages, there are many languages for writing code. CS First teaches a language called “Scratch," which was designed to be simpler and more forgiving of mistakes than the languages that professionals use. When coding in Scratch, students write step-by-step instructions to control the actions of cartoon-like characters, making them move, make sound, or respond to things that a person taps, types, or clicks. From these pieces, students can create animations, tell stories, write games, and do many other things.
Scratch is very open-ended, letting students express their own interests and ideas in what they create. This approach encourages students to learn through play and experimentation—the same way that young children learn to talk—giving them the basic skills that they can build upon if they choose to continue learning to code. Even those students who don’t want to continue coding will get valuable practice with problem solving and logical thinking, and will start to see computers as tools for making new things, and not just for using what others have made.
CS First provides video-based lessons that lead students through creating different kinds of Scratch projects, introducing them to Scratch’s most important features along the way, using Scratch for CS First, a special version of the Scratch coding editor inside the CS First website. The primary goal is to help students feel comfortable within Scratch, giving them the confidence to continue exploring on their own. Your family’s support and encouragement will help them continue the learning process.
Why is what CS First teaches important to my family and my student’s future?
CS First teaches the basics of computer coding, which is how people write instructions to make computers do new things. Learning to code has many important benefits:
- In addition to increasing comfort with computers, learning to code gives students practice with skills like problem solving, logical thinking, and dealing with complexity, skills that are valuable both in daily life and in future careers.
- Coding opens the doors to full-time coding jobs, and offers a leg up in many other careers, as well. Because computers touch most parts of our economy, professional coding skills open doors to jobs across the country and in nearly every industry, including technology, financial services, manufacturing, defense, and healthcare.
- People with coding skills can find new ways to improve their communities or contribute to personally-meaningful causes. Drawing on free resources and open online communities, people can use code to write smartphone apps, create websites, organize large amounts of information, and invent other ways to contribute to the world.
- Finally, learning to code helps to demystify how computers work, making it possible to be more engaged in debates about technology in society, and to make sure that every community’s needs are considered as technology grows in sophistication.
Given how central computers are to our lives, it is important for as many people from as many walks of life as possible to become familiar with coding. Regardless of where your family lives and what sort of future your envision for your family’s younger members, there is a way that learning to code can help your family, your community, and the world.
How can I help my student continue learning to code?
By making it easier for any teacher to introduce coding, CS First aims to expand access to all of the potential benefits that coding skills provide. However, CS First only provides an introduction. Families have a central role to play in helping students take further steps.
Note: CS First teaches coding in Scratch, using a special version of the Scratch coding editor inside the CS First website.
Help your student complete CS First activities
- When used on an internet-connected computer, logging in with a Scratch account lets your student save their creations and work on them at another time or place.
- If you help your student create a Scratch account, make sure to go over the Scratch Community Guidelines together.
- If you would rather not make a Scratch account for your student, they can still save their work from Scratch by opening the File menu and choosing Save to your computer.
Using Scratch (beyond CS First)
A CS First account will not work on Scratch, so one way students can continue learning to code is with a Scratch account, which you can help your student create here. This lets them participate in the Scratch community, a moderated online venue that helps new coders learn and develop confidence. See Scratch’s “For Parents” page for more information, and see here for more information on copying school projects to a new Scratch account.
Note: Scratch is a project of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. Google is not responsible for Scratch’s software or content.
- When used on an internet-connected computer, logging in with a Scratch account lets your student save their creations and work on them at another time or place.
- If you help your student create a Scratch account, make sure to go over the Scratch Community Guidelines together.
- If you would rather not make a Scratch account for your student, they can still save their work from Scratch by opening the “File” menu and choosing “Save to your computer."
Learning New Things in Scratch
- One great way to learn is to look at what others have done.
- With your student, look at the featured projects at scratch.mit.edu, or click Explore from the top of the screen to see more.
- Find a project your student likes, and then click See Inside to look at the code that makes it work.
- Experiment together with changing the code to see what happens. Playing around is a great way to learn. (Don’t worry, you’ll be changing a copy of the project, not the original one.)
- There are also complete lessons right within Scratch.
- Within the Scratch editor, click the Tutorials button at the top.
- There are also more lessons and ideas at scratch.mit.edu/ideas.
- You can get more ideas at the teacher-focused ScratchEd website. (ScratchEd is a project of the Creative Computing Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.)
Providing Encouragement
- In a classroom, students are encouraged to share what they’ve made with their classmates, help each when they get stuck, and turn to their teacher for additional encouragement and help. Your family members can play the same role, making coding into a social activity.
- You don’t need to know how to code to be helpful. Scratch encourages learning by doing, and learning from mistakes. Encourage your student to jump in and experiment, and show them it’s OK not to know everything as long as they’re willing to try.
- See this list for resources that go beyond Scratch. You can also ask your student’s school for middle and high school electives related to computer science, coding, programming, or robotics, or look for after school programs in these areas.
There is no particular “type” of person who is destined to be a successful coder. By encouraging your student’s interest, praising their efforts to learn, and helping them find friends and role models who share a love of coding, you can help them find a place for coding in their future.
If you're looking for additional resources and more ways to navigate technology with your family, check out families.google.