It's easy to overlook that coding with text requires a high level of literacy, programming is one of the most exacting forms of writing. Students not only need to spell words exactly right, but also need to format perfectly and are expected to use a wide variety of characters that never appear in every-day life.
Working with existing code is also an extreme form of reading. Students need to understand what the code is supposed to do according to the programmer's intentions, figure out what the interpreter will actually do, and modify the text to have new behavior without interfering with what already exists. This requires a level of pattern recognition and attention to detail in spelling & format that is simply not expected elsewhere.
Focusing on typing skills, using word processors in other classes, studying code as a text without executing it, and playing off-line games that involve reading and writing pseudo-code can go a long way towards preparing students to write code from scratch.
- Typing Games
- Typed Assignments
- Pseudo Code Games
- Toggling Editors
- Study Code as Text
- Starter-Code Exercises
A great way for students to improve their typing skills is with typing games, they're fun and they work. Typing games aren't just for kids either:
- games for kids: Typing Games, Kidz Type, Typing Test, Learning Games for Kids
- less colorful games: Speed Coder: practice typing code, Keybr: practice the charecters you want to
An effective way to give your students practice typing is to complete assignments for other subjects in a word processor. Or if your students are up for it, in a code editor.
Editors like Visual Studio Code or Sublime are (at their very heart) just word processing software. Students can open & save files, edit text, and even use spell-check like in Word. Along the way they can get used to navigating directory structures and get familiar with text formatting and auto-complete.
On-line and off-line pseudo-code games can help students prepare for the basic format and semantics of code.
Toxicode's Compute-It is an outstanding on-line game that makes you be the computer interpreting pseudo-code instructions to pass on to the next level. This game builds up to recursive functions in a very approachable way. This game is also very well-suited to adapting for offline play. For example, one student can read off the instructions while other students walk around over paper dots on the floor.
This set of resources is everything you need to get started with off-line pseudo code in class. It includes lesson plans, print-outs, and readings.
Programming environments that allow students to toggle between between text and blocks will help your students prepare for text-based programming by letting them generate code with blocks and study the resulting code.
In some of these environments students can only view the resulting code, but others will allow students to modify the same script either with blocks or text. The editors that allow direct editing of the text will also provide helpful feedback on any syntax errors students might make.
Some examples include:
- BlockPy - Edit in Python or Blocks, view both side-by-side
- PencilCode - Toggle between blocks & CoffeeScript or JavaScript
- Trinket - write projects with blocks and export to python
- Make Code - program for Micro Bit processors in JavaScript and blocks
- Tynker and Minecraft also have features that allow students to develop in their game environments flexibly using blocks or text.
When code isn't being run, it's just text in a text file. When students are editing code it's not running, it's just text. So why not study it like text without running it?
Below are some tools for studying code as text:
- Side-by-Side - Create blocks, convert them to text, and study the snippet as text
- Parsonizer - convert any snippet into a parsons problem
- Shuffle - shuffle up the letters & numbers in a snippet while preserving syntax & formatting
- Spot - Randomly replace letters and numbers with dots
Writing code from a blank page is overwhelming at the beginning, not only because programming is hard but also because writing is not so easy. Try creating exercises and projects that provide students with starter code and ask them to fill in some blanks, fix a simple bug, or make small modifications. Not only is there less writing to do, but students can learn from studying the correct code that you wrote.
Extra bonus, this is one of the easiest types of exercises to create and support. You can create exercises out of the code you yourself studied, getting two things done at once. You'll also be placing tighter constraints on the types of errors your students encounter since they are not searching all over to find the starter code they need.
Blocks to Text