Southampton County Public Schools

Students now have another avenue to apply problem-solving, team building, and presentation skills as they collaborate and share their thinking process with peers. Thanks to our incredible teachers and the support of a partnership with Code to the Future, we can engage students through block- and text-based coding activities to enhance their educational experiences through computer science. Through this 21st century literacy, students are developing critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration skills.

We believe coding is the wave of the future and will lead to countless jobs in many aspects of computer science. Coding is the standard language used throughout the world, and all our students will be active participants without boundaries or exceptions. During our first year, well over 1200 students in grades K-5 each completed two Computer Science projects. The first project dealt with block-based coding and the parameters. Finished product varied by grade level. The second project involved building coding related activities with Legos in grades 2 - 5 focusing on robotics including building, programming, controlling, and handling input from various sensors.

Our computer science immersion continued into our second year, adding middle school students to the program for a total of 1850 students. Our elementary students will complete three projects this year including projects from last year for their new grade levels and an additional project in gaming simulation. The middle school student will complete two projects. One in block-based coding and the other programming in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create web pages about the content they are learning various classes blending the curriculum.

We have committed to engaging parents and the community, as well as other local districts to learn from our best practices. We have had students from each elementary school attend Rotary Club meetings, hosted evening receptions, and invited parents and the community into our building for “Epic Builds,” where the upper-grade students do a presentation about Computer Science and details about the cycle projects. During the 2017 - 2018 school year, we held two tours for other school division to visit and observe our Computer Immersion. We know of at least one school division that has begun a similar program in their school system this school year after attending one of our tours in 2017 - 2018.