15 students joined the ‘Coding with Sophie’ launch session at Limbrick Wood Primary School after school club, and completed their six session programme just before the summer holidays.

The ‘Coding with Sophie’ programme has been developed by Dr Rebecca Nealon and Dr Farzana Meru, with the aim to improve coding literacy and to inspire children to consider coding (and more broadly STEM) in their future, as well as empowering teachers and parents to support children in their coding journey.

Limbrick Wood Primary School don’t get the opportunity for many visitors from outside of the school community and the teachers were eager for the students to meet scientists and support both the students and teachers with their science learning.

The students launch session was part of their after-school club and was led by Dr Rebecca Nealon and supported by Mairi O’Brien and Gareth Jones. The program centres on Sophie the astronaut and students help Sophie to build and launch her rocket, leave the solar system and eventually encounter a black hole. The students had a variety of coding experiences but by the end of their six sessions the students were experts in “do loops”, “if statements”, functions, debugging skills and coding logic (as required by the National Curriculum). The students engage easily with the Scratch style coding that uses blocks rather than words to represent their code and familiarity with this format makes it easier for them to progress to other programs later. The narrative and course structure makes the kids excited for every lesson with rockets flying around satellites, alien messages to decode, badges to collect and friends to be saved around the black hole.

Dr Rebecca Nealon says:

 “I firmly believe that learning coding skills is crucial for kids. Even if children do not go on to a career that uses programming, these programs develop problem solving skills, abstract thinking, spatial awareness, logic and perseverance – all skills we value as foundational in other subjects. Within just a few lessons we find kids grow rapidly in their confidence whatever their starting point and by the end of the program they are discussing their own code with us like they were experts.”

Coding with Sophie sets itself apart from similar programs in two ways. First, the program includes a physics focus with an entire lesson dedicated to the extreme environment around a black hole where students learn about the event horizon, spaghettification and then try to save (or shred!) their character around the black hole. Second, the classes are taught by astrophysicists and engineers who may not have a formal degree in programming but it is fundamental to their career. Our presence is a great way to start the conversation about careers that use coding and to inspiring children (and in particular girls) to pursue STEM. It also inspires endless questions about black holes which we are more than happy to answer.

Ally Caldecote (Outreach Officer) told us:

 “The children have LOVED these sessions, picking Bec’s brain about all sorts of space questions as well as about coding.”

Ally developed the relationship with the school when she was asked to run a workshop during National Science Week to all of their students from year 6 to reception (ages 11-4)! The school selected the students to participate in Coding with Sophie program, but the team will deliver another workshop at the school in the next academic year for other students.

If you are interested, please get in touch with Dr Rebecca Nealon.Link opens in a new window