Dr Rebecca Nealon and Dr Farzana Meru from our Astronomy and Astrophysics group have been working with our outreach officer, Ally Caldecote to develop a new coding program for students aged 7-11. The aim of the program is to improve coding literacy and to inspire children to consider coding (and more broadly STEM) in their future, as well as empower teachers and parents to support children in their coding journey.

As a Stephen Hawking Fellowship holder, Rebecca has an outreach component which started the development of the new program. The program which is being run as a pilot with a local school involves 6 lessons, each of which contains a bit of Physics, some 'unplugged' coding exercises and self-led coding exercises. Named 'Coding with Sophie', the children use coding to help Sophie the Astronaut solve a bunch of problems to collect her rocket parts, build and launch the rocket, avoid asteroids, find the aliens, draw smoke patterns and fall into the black hole.

The team are aiming to offer this programme within more local primary schools, and eventually to send out the resources for teachers to run in the classes themselves. Rebecca tells us, "A major part of this program is to encourage more children to pursue coding and to engage them with physics problems. In our pilot study we have found that students enjoy this balance and really like applying the physics they have learnt in a coding framework."

The six week pilot program has just finished with capacity for school visits building from March 2023.

For more information, please contact Dr Rebecca NealonLink opens in a new window or Dr Farzana MeruLink opens in a new window.