National Coding Week 2024

National Coding week is a volunteer-led organisation founded in 2014 that aims to help build people’s confidence and skills by encouraging volunteers to run fun and engaging digital events. This year the week runs from 16th to 22nd September with a theme this year of AI.

There are a number of ways that schools can get involved in National Coding Week, such as running a coding challenge for students or simply showcasing how you are supporting coding in the school.

Coding with Purple Mash

Within Purple Mash there are a range of tools that can support you with Coding in school.

These tools can be used on their own, with activities chosen for National Coding Week, or teachers can use the detailed coding plans, including our new slideshows to support the teaching of coding contained within the Purple Mash Computing Scheme of Work. There is a medium-term plan for each unit accompanied by detailed individual plans and slideshows that walk the teacher through the lesson.

This short video provides a guide to coding in Purple Mash 👉

Purple Chip

The Purple Chip app allows users to control a phone or tablet from code written in 2Code Purple Chip. Children can make games, quizzes and more, and there are even examples for them to view before giving it a go for themselves. You can read more about Purple Chip here.

Computing Scheme of Work

Within the computing scheme of work, every year group from Year 1 has a dedicated unit of lessons for Coding, as well as other units for additional skill-building such as:

• Maze Explorers where children learn debugging
• micro:bits where children write code and program micro:bits
• Logo where children learn how to give instructions
• Using External Devices where children program a phone or tablet to respond to stimuli
• Text Adventures where children plan and code their own story adventure

Every single lesson includes key computing vocabulary and definitions, and there are knowledge organisers for each unit that set out the key learning, resources, vocabulary, key images and key questions for that unit.

In addition, if you are wanting to link to this year's theme of AI, there is a unit of work on Artificial Intelligence in Year 4, which could be adapted for different year groups depending on their understanding.

If you don't have Purple Mash, you can download a sample pack of knowledge organisers here.

The Time Crimes of Logonator

The week would also be a great time to challenge your pupils to complete the Time-Crimes of Logonator. Pupils must pit themselves against an evil robot who travels in time trying to disrupt the development of civilization. In each mission they must solve a puzzle using Logo. There are 13 missions in total and pupils need to unlock each one in turn, there are also printable sheets that support the missions as well as support for teachers.

Mash Club and Digital Leaders

The week is also the perfect time to set up your Digital Leaders. Digital Leaders are children with a passion for technology who want to share their knowledge with other and promote the use of all things digital throughout the school. We have everything you need to get started in Pupil Mash including challenges each half term that the Digital Leaders can complete.

They could help run a Mash Club. Mash Club is a pack of resources for running a computing coding club at your school using the Purple Mash tools. This includes an eight-week course on coding and Blogging using 2Code and 2Blog. Everything that you need to run the club is included and there is handy getting started guide as well as session outlines and a range of printable resources.

Python in Pieces

Finally, you could try our award-winning Python in Pieces resource. Transition your students from block-based coding to Python with guided lessons, open-ended activities and the ability to translate block-code to Python in both directions.

Designed by teachers to empower the specialist and non-specialist to teach Key Stage 3 coding with confidence, Python in Pieces is also perfect for developing the coding capability of your Year 6 students. The guided lessons allow students to manage their own learning and teacher solution guides enable teachers to support student learning at every step.

Whatever you do for National Coding Week, we would love to see your coding creations shared with us on either our Facebook and Twitter pages.