After distance learning, the new academic year began in the classrooms to the joy of all students and teachers. The big news from this fall is the teaching of informatics in the lower grades of elementary school. From the 2020/2021 school year. it was introduced as an optional subject from the 1st grade.

One of the educational goals of learning and teaching the subject of informatics is to develop computational thinking, the ability to solve problems and programming skills, and this is why we joined the European Programming Week (EU Code Week) this year, for the eighth time in a row.

The European Programming Week is an initiative of the European Commission whose goal is to bring programming, computational thinking and develop digital literacy closer together in a fun and attractive way. Learning to code helps us make sense of the rapidly changing world around us, expand our understanding of how technology works, and develop the skills and abilities to explore new ideas and be innovative.

And it can be programmed in different ways with all students, including the youngest who are just learning their first letters and numbers.
Under the leadership of teacher Ivana Ružić, who is also the ambassador of the European Programming Week and an excellent motivator with her many years of experience and enthusiasm, numerous activities were organized in the first elementary school in Čakovec, in which all students from the 1st to the 8th grade of the home school and regional schools were involved. schools in Novi Selo Rok and Krištanovac. 

In addition to Ivana Ružić, activities and events were organized and led by three other IT teachers - Maja Hižman, Sanja Murk and Ivana Vadlja. The activities were linked together and entered into the Code Week 4 All challenge which gives schools the chance to win a Certificate of Excellence.

The central celebration was organized on Tuesday, October 20, 2020 in the school yard when students presented to each other their own skills in programming different robots and smart toys. The students introduced to each other the particularly attractive robot Sphero BB8, the humanoid robot Alpha, the Parrot Mambo drones, the cheerful Ozobots and the playful BlueBots.

With the teacher Ivana Ružić, the students met, assembled and programmed the most popular Lego WeDo 2.0, Spike Prime and Mindstorms EV3 robots. With the help of the iPad and Osmo Coding, they developed basic programming skills and helped the cute character Awbie collect delicious strawberries.

In the first grade, teacher Ivana Vadlja conducted programming activities without a computer in which students followed and created a series of instructions to solve various tasks with the same purpose - solving problems. Following the instructions with the arrows, they drew a Hashtag character, and they also created their own instructions on how to get the car from home to the store without driving through puddles of water. Students from other classes solved tasks in which they recognized repetition of patterns, classified data and analyzed the answers offered. Third graders programmed in Scratch and arranged the way from home to school with the help of the Ozobot robot. The fourth grade had an organized conversation with a programmer who creates websites and chatbots. The programmer demonstrated one of her chatbots to them, explained how it works and showed the program code.

Teacher Maja Hižman introduced the first-grade students to BlueBots, for which she created a special warm-up track where the students practiced basic steps. She created a pair-matching brainteaser with which she wanted to show how the teaching of informatics through programming can be connected with the Croatian language and mathematics. Special attention was paid to the social game "Bug Duel", in which the goal is to replace the places of the BlueBots by throwing the dice and following the instructions. In second grade, students used Ozobots and drew unfinished paths while third and fourth graders created their first game in Scratch.

With teacher Sanja Murk, the students programmed in Scratch. The fifth grade went on a walk with dinosaurs in Jurassic. Who would have thought that dinosaurs could be blue, purple, spotted... Did you know that dinosaurs under the guidance of newly minted programmers can hide in a castle?

Eighth graders found out why the chicken crossed the road. The children showed a handful of ideas and developed their first small projects in a creative and fun way.

8th graders Jana, Klara and Sara introduced us to the capabilities of the BB-8 robot from the Star Wars collection. We learned from the girls that the tiny droid is actually the first robot that was created through the collaboration between Sphero and Star Wars. BB-8 connects to a mobile device or iPad via Bluetooth. The girls showed us how to control BB-8 with the help of a joystick, voice commands and how we can program the commands that BB-8 will execute.

If we look back at the numerous activities that have been carried out in our school, we can say with certainty that we will celebrate the European Programming Week next year as well. Our school is one of the few that has different robots that we use with pleasure and great pride in classes and extracurricular activities. 

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