Transitioning students from block-based coding to text-based coding is an important step in any coding curriculum, and one that must not go overlooked. Let's start by understanding the difference between these two coding styles.
What is Block-Based Coding?
Block-Based coding is meant for younger students, or those just beginning their coding journey. Typically there are little blocks that represent different coding functions which students can drag-and-drop into place to create the necessary program. Using blocks allows the students to focus on the logic and planning of the code rather than having to remember the exact function names, formats and syntax.
What is Text-Based Coding?
Because coding with blocks is not available in real-world jobs, it's important that students transition to text-based coding and learn the proper syntax of the programming language. With text-based coding, the students are meant to type out the functions manually, with correct formatting and in the correct order. In order to do this, students must have a more advanced knowledge of the programming language and proper syntax.
How to Successfully Transition Between the Two Styles of Coding
As you can see above, Codementum provides both block-base and text-based coding areas on one screen, allowing students to easily toggle between the two. This lets students learn the concepts with blocks and then see the real-world code associated with those functions.
Codementum wrote an in-depth article on how and when to successfully transition students from one method to the other, including statistics, scientific research and much more.
...or watch this short webinar about the same topic.
In addition to there all-in-one coding platform, these amazing resources are a big reason Codementum is becoming one of the leading learn-to-code platforms in elementary schools for learning JavaScript and Python. If you're interested in adopting Codementum in your school, please contact us for a quote today!
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