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Stratford Schools Bring Coding to Life During Hour of Code Week

December 9th – 13th is Hour of Code and Computer Science Education Week, and Stratford Schools engaged students with a wide range of fun activities and insightful presentations to show students the power, fun, and creativity in coding. Highly skilled and knowledgeable experts in the fields of AI and engineering also shared with students about topics ranging from the computing power required to support AI to how robots are being used in surgery. Read on for just a few of the highlights across the Stratford School network.

Stratford San Jose Middle School

During Computer Science Education Week and Hour of Code celebrations, our San Jose Middle School campus hosted an engaging Artificial Intelligence (AI) panel featuring experts from the parent community with over 300 students in attendance! Our highly knowledgeable panel of speakers included AI expert from Gen AI Maggie Hu, head of the NSF Cyberinfrastructure division Dr. Puri Bangalore, and CMO of Code.org, Ms. Amy Love. They covered topics such as the AI landscape, Large Language Models (LLMs), the computing power and infrastructure required to support AI advancements, the impact of AI on middle schoolers, essential coding skills, and more!

Stratford San Jose Middle School Hour of Code Week presentation

Meanwhile, another fun Hour of Code in-school activity was the Mentor Project where our 8th-grade students coached 5th-graders in various areas including Python coding, SCRATCH, Raspberry Pi, digital art, computer hardware, and more. We appreciate the contributions of all our parents and staff, as well as our 8th-graders for mentoring their peers.

Stratford San Jose Middle School Mentor Project Hour of Code Week

Stratford Los Gatos

Our Los Gatos students enjoyed a week full of fun activities and insightful presentations for Hour of Code Week! Parents came into the classrooms to share knowledge about the Artificial Intelligence system DALL-E, how to design characters in video games with 3D Modeling, and how robots are being used in surgery. Thank you to our parents for sharing their knowledge on such engaging topics for our students!

Stratford Los Gatos parent presentation Hour of Code Week

Stratford Dublin

Our students at Stratford School Dublin celebrated Hour of Code Week with exciting hands-on coding activities! They have been able to explore programming through a variety of lessons on different block coding platforms that include Tynker, Scratch, Kodable, and Code.org. They were also thrilled to receive the Hour of Code Certificate after completing a series of coding challenges and activities!

Stratford Dublin Hour of Code Week Certificates

Stratford Morgan Hill

Our Stratford Morgan Hill elementary students kicked off Hour of Code Week by learning about binary code and then programming their own games. They also welcomed two special guests, a reliability engineer and a VP of engineering with Microsoft, who shared their profession and sparked interest among our students. What a fun and engaging way to teach our students about coding!

Stratford Morgan Hill Hour of Code Week

Stratford Palo Alto

Hour of Code Week at our Stratford Palo Alto campus included fun and engaging activities for all ages. Our elementary students made music and coded together in the Music Lab, proving that creativity and technology go hand in hand. Middle schoolers coded animations in Sprite Lab, creating virtual pets and greeting cards that showcase their creativity. They also dove into Game Lab as they built interactive games with JavaScript like future game developers, and mastered HTML and CSS to design cool web pages in the Web Lab. Our students have shown us that coding is fun, creative, and empowering!

Stratford Palo Alto Hour of Code Week

Stratford Fremont Osgood

Stratford Fremont Osgood started the week off strong with a variety of exciting coding activities including a Moana-themed programming activity for 2nd-graders, a dance themed programming activity for 3rd-graders, a fun card game to learn about conditional statements for our 4th-graders, and our 5th-graders learned about algorithm creation and debugging through a cup stacking activity.

Stratford Fremont Osgood cup stacking activity for Hour of Code Week

Events and activities such as these spark lifelong curiosity and passions in our students, and we remain committed to high-quality STEM education that nurtures the next generation of developers, coders, and engineers!

Stratford Milpitas Great Mall

During Stratford Milpitas Great Mall’s Hour of Code Week, our elementary students were thrilled to learn about coding vocabulary! Our 1st-graders explored important concepts like algorithms, sequencing and debugging through hands-on activities of sequencing puzzles. Our 2nd-graders learned about computer functions and how binary code works, and even got to make their own binary robots! Our 3rd through 5th-graders focused on Pixels, RGB color formation and pixel density and were able to create pixel art on graph paper using math calculations and algorithmic thinking. In the second session, they took it a step further by learning to create their own animations using pixel coding techniques. We are ecstatic that our students had a blast learning about robotics and coding!

Stratford Santa Clara Pomeroy

Stratford Santa Clara Pomeroy unplugged coding activities

Stratford School Santa Clara Pomeroy students had an incredible Hour of Code Week that started with unplugged activities and transitioned to coding and programming tasks in the later part of the week. Among the unplugged activities, students designed paper bracelets to visualize binary numbers by assigning colors to represent 1s and 0s, then encoding their initials, names, or short messages in binary using an ASCII table. This creative, hands-on activity introduced students to binary systems, coding, and data representation in a computer-free environment. Another highlight of the week was completing the Hour of Code on Code.org. We love that our students are able to learn about coding in such an engaging and memorable way.

Stratford Mission Viejo

Hour of Code Week at our Stratford School Mission Viejo was full of exciting activities for students to learn and explore the different concepts of computer science! Our preschoolers and kindergarteners used their robot, Bee Bot, to learn about the water cycle. The children guided a bee bot to show different stages of the water cycle. For our first and second graders, one of our parents presented on robotics and artificial intelligence! He  spoke about the various types of robots and how they have evolved through increasingly sophisticated AI technology. The students were captivated by the fascinating insights and real-world applications of robotics.

Stratford Mission Viejo Bee Bot

We are growing and inspiring the next generation of coders and engineers, and are thankful to be part of bringing coding to life during Hour of Code Week!

Learn more about Stratford Schools here.

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