Bee-Bot is a robot designed for use by young children. The colorful, easy-to-operate, and friendly little robot is a perfect tool for teaching sequencing, estimation, problem-solving, and just having fun! It was inspired by Seymour Papert’s robot turtles and LOGO programming language. In this unit, students will learn to program Bee-Bots using sequences of simple commands. By doing so, they will gain fluency with planning, testing, and debugging programs of increasing complexity. The lessons were designed to support groups of about 4 students per Bee-Bot.
Interested in learning about professional learning opportunities for World Language teachers? Please read SFUSD's quarterly World Language Newsletter, volume 1 published by the Multilingual Pathways Department in C&I.
ScratchJr is a developmentally appropriate programming language designed specifically for children aged five through seven by teams at Tufts University and MIT. Using the ScratchJr app, children can create their own interactive collages, animated stories, games, and other programs. In this unit, which can be further divided into two modules, students will learn a series of concepts and skills that are applied in two primary creative projects -- an interactive collage and an animated story. Through these lessons, students will learn how to express their own ideas in a way that a computer can understand. These lessons were designed to support students working individually and in pairs, with 1-2 tablets per pair.
Bee-Bot is a robot designed for use by young children. The colorful, easy-to-operate, and friendly little robot is a perfect tool for teaching sequencing, estimation, problem-solving, and just having fun! It was inspired by Seymour Papert’s robot turtles and LOGO programming language. In this unit, students will learn to program Bee-Bots using sequences of simple commands. By doing so, they will gain fluency with planning, testing, and debugging programs of increasing complexity. The lessons were designed to support groups of about 4 students per Bee-Bot.
In the first unit, students will be introduced to computer science first through a story about a little girl who goes on an adventure and encounters many computer science concepts along the way, and then by playing a game to navigate a robotic dog. All of the activities in this unit are unplugged, and many involve active movement or arts and crafts.
SFUSD's creative computing curriculum introduces computer science as a creative, collaborative, and engaging discipline to children in third through fifth grade. The Blue Level curriculum builds upon the foundational skills students acquired in the Green Level curriculum, and is recommended for students in grades 4 or 5. Across 4 units and 12-20 lessons, students will learn about algorithms and programming, computing systems, the Internet, and impacts of computing, while developing strong practices and dispositions. Lessons are designed to be implemented in 45 to 60-minute periods approximately once per week.
Unit Pacing
The Blue Level curriculum contains 4 units of 5 lessons, for a total of 20 lessons. To accommodate different school schedules, we offer the following accordion-style model for expanding or contracting the number of lessons in each unit so that students can experience the content in all 4 units in a 12-, 16-, or 20- session Computer Science course.
SFUSD's creative computing curriculum introduces computer science as a creative, collaborative, and engaging discipline to children in third through fifth grade. The Green Level curriculum serves as a foundational entry point for students in grades 3-5 to begin exploring computer science concepts. Across 4 units and 12-20 lessons, students will learn about algorithms and programming through programming in Scratch, while developing strong practices and dispositions. Lessons are designed to be implemented in 45 to 60-minute periods approximately once per week.
