Young Coders are more than up to Scratch
St Mary's Year 6 coding team, the Ecoders, have shown they are more than up to Scratch by coming an impressive second place in the Young Coders Competition 2023, out of almost 600 entries from across the UK.
This is a national competition organised by 'The Worshipful Company of Information Technologists', for children in Years 4-8 to design and code an interactive computer game, using the ‘Scratch’ programming language. It raises awareness of careers in STEM-related industries, in accordance with this year’s theme, ‘A Future in STEM’.
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The girls have worked on this project independently, predominantly in their own time during evenings and weekends, keeping in touch and collaborating via Microsoft Teams.
Judges' feedback about the game the St Mary's team created included:
"Your game is really good and I love the concept of having a mini-game for each topic. The graphics are really good and the sprites are consistent with the backgrounds. This game does a great job at introducing STEM to the target audience."
"The game is well thought out and educational. The code included was well-written, and the game functioned well. I enjoyed playing the game; the graphics used in the game were excellent. I liked that you could choose a character at the beginning to play with. The game matched the theme set and showed great examples of STEM jobs."
"The game was fun and informative; it was in line with the theme. Great to have interaction throughout the game."
Each of the girls will receive a personalised, engraved shield and a certificate and, as a result of their efforts, the Junior School will also receive a shield and a prize of £100! This will be used to purchase additional resources to enhance the Computer Science curriculum and thus benefit all the girls for years to come.
Many congratulations to Emma C-R., Emily E., Gayatri K., and Brontë M. for their creativity, maturity, teamwork and, not least, their coding skills which have resulted in this amazing achievement against very stiff competition.
Try out the Ecoders' game here