The Hawthorne Elementary School after-school Coding Club meets once a week for an hour to work with various items in the maker-space area of the media center. Eighteen third- through fifth-graders participate in the first session of Coding Club for 10 weeks with two coaches, Grace Pfeifer and Staci Waltman.  They are working with six Dash and six Dot robots that follow the codes students input for them. A second session of Coding Club will be offered to 18 different third- through fifth-grade students beginning in January for 10 weeks, as well.

The benefits of a Coding Club are enormous for students as they prepare for life after school.  There is computational thinking involved (enables a student to deconstruct problems, recognize patterns and understand abstract concepts), communication and collaboration skills (enables a student to practice sharing and listening to thoughts, ideas and problems with fellow coders), engagement and using robots.