INFO FOR SCHOOLS
The Youth Coding League Addresses Computer Science and Programming Education Needs
- Lack of teachers on staff who know how to code, or lack the comfort level teaching this skill to students.
- Lack of time to develop a coding program, or uncertainty of how to start getting such a program set up in your school.
- Lack of project-based learning or STEM programming in your school.
What is the Youth Coding League?
- A fully-packaged, extracurricular program for grades 5-8 that introduces computer science in a project-based learning environment.
- A youth sports model adds an engaging competitive element to the program.
- Students build their skills in the regular season and apply those skills in a post season playoff series with big prizes on the line
Regular Season
- Youth Coding League teams meet once a week for an hour-and-a-half to two hours at a time throughout a semester.
- During the regular season, coders work through Google's CS First curriculum.
- Coder projects are scored by Youth Coding League staff each week, and coders can show off their progress and hard work to their grown-ups on their player profile at YouthCodingLeague.com
- At YouthCodingLeague.com, coders can track individual stats, earn digital badges, and see how they shake out individually and as a team among the other coders in the league.
About the Google CS First Curriculum
- Progressive and teaches core computer science principles.
- CS First provides materials to support the curriculum
- The Youth Coding Leagues provides robust materials on top of that to make it easy for a teacher, regardless of their coding experience, to lead a YCL team.
- A different theme is featured each semester, with themes including story-telling, music and sound, art, and sports.
- Coders learn from videos where Google staffers teach a new computer science concept each week, and apply that new concept in a project they build out in Scratch.
Two Ways to Win
- Community Favorite: Schools and their communities rally around a project to help the team with the most votes advance.
- Technical Merit: Projects advance to the next round from scores received by industry professionals reviewing code for proficiency and skill.
Postseason
- After a regular season of working individually and tracking their progress each week at YouthCodingLeague.com, coders showcase their new skill set in the postseason.
- Coders group up to build a project using a broad prompt that shows off everything they learned that season.
- We want to give the coders opportunities to work like software developers, and professional software developers often perform pair programming.
- These projects are competitive in a variety of ways in a bracket-styles virtual competition series, with big prizes like computers, cash, projectors, and drones on the line.
Student Impact
"The Youth Coding League has taught me that I can do things that might seem hard."
During the regular season, coders work through Google's CS First curriculum.
"I learned that I can do hard things"
"I learned that computer science can help people with problem-solving in school. I learned that I was smarter than I thought I was."
"I learned that computer science doesn't have to be hard or complicated if you take it in small steps."
"The most important thing I learned was to not give up."
Bring the Youth Coding League to Your School!
Contact Stacy Dohogne Lane:stacy@youthcodingleague.com(573) 335-9675GET STARTED
Need Funding?
Want YCL in your school, but don’t have the funds to support it? Check out our Grant-Funding Database for resources!GET STARTED
