Road Code: Transport Themed Coding Challenge!

Who said coding had to be complicated? This transport-themed coding challenge is easy to understand and do, and it’s a whole lot of fun!

Recommended for Years 1-8

The lesson is available for class sharing here.

Curriculum Links:

Progress outcome 1 – Computational Thinking for Digital Technologies

In authentic contexts and taking account of end users, students use their decomposition skills to break down simple non-computerised tasks into precise, unambiguous, step-by-step instructions (algorithmic thinking). They give these instructions, identify any errors in them as they are followed, and correct them (simple debugging).

Progress outcome 2 – Computational Thinking for Digital Technologies

In authentic contexts and taking account of end users, students give, follow and debug simple algorithms in computerised and non-computerised contexts.

LESSON CONTENT

Sometimes we hear words like “coding” and “computational thinking” and start to get a little lost. They seem more complicated than they actually are! For us today we are thinking of coding as a way of giving instructions and computational thinking as breaking a problem down into simple steps.

We’re gonna test some of our coding and computational thinking skills in the transport-themed drawing challenge below.

CHALLENGE

The goal of this challenge is to exactly copy the transport-themed drawings at the bottom of this page. The catch is that the person drawing cannot look at the drawings but can only receive verbal or written instructions from someone else.

Here are the instructions:

1. Get into pairs
2. Choose one person to be the drawer and one person to give instructions
3. Choose one of the drawings from the following six slides or create your own drawing
4. The instruction giver has to tell the drawer how to draw the picture without mentioning what it is or what it looks like

Suggestions for different ways to do the challenge:

• Try writing the instructions and giving them to a parent or sibling to draw
• Send your instructions to a classmate, or instruct them on a video call
• Draw your own drawing and write instructions for it, send it to the rest of your class to draw
• Teachers, try writing your own instructions and run the drawing challenge in your next virtual classroom 

Check out this youtube video for an example of this activity: