For this year’s Hour of Code, Codecademy has partnered with Clever to help high school teachers and students learn the basics of coding in a fun, interactive way. If you’re a teacher participating in Hour of Code, use the lesson plan below to help your students explore the world of coding and head over to Clever to access Codecademy for free.

Technology has incorporated itself into our everyday lives making it important to understand how different technologies function. In order for technology to work, it needs to be told exactly what to do in a language it can understand; this is where code comes into play. Code is a set of instructions that computers can both understand and execute. Pretty much everything powered by electricity uses code. That’s a lot of programming!

The Hour of Code is a great opportunity for students to explore the world of coding as a programmer.

Planning an Hour of Code in the Classroom

It’s easy using Codecademy in the classroom. Here’s an example timeframe of how you can spend the Hour of Code with students.

Don’t worry if students don’t stick to this exact activity schedule. Students may end up spending a majority of their time on the lesson and that’s okay! This hour is all about individual explorations of the coding experience.

Opener

To start off the Hour of Code, ask your students to think about the following question: what does a programmer do? Then, share the following video with your class:

After students finish watching the video, they’ll start going through one of our many courses. One section of a course generally consists of a lesson, a quiz, and a project.

Lesson

Our Codecademy lessons consist of several interactive exercises. A single exercise usually contains a narrative, checkpoints, and a code editor. The narrative explains a topic for students to read about. Once they finish reading the narrative, students will move onto the checkpoints which are used as a check for understanding. The checkpoints will ask students to use the code editor to perform a specific coding task related to the narrative. Once the student’s code is satisfactory, the student can move on to the next exercise.

The lesson could take anywhere from 30 minutes to the complete 60 minutes depending on how quickly the student gets through each exercise.

Quiz

Our quizzes are used to test how well a learner retained the information from a lesson. Each quiz is made up of both multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank questions. At the end of the quiz, students receive a score about how they did with the multiple choice. Learners have the option to retake the quiz if they feel that they can improve their score.

Project

Learners can apply their understanding of a lesson by working on a guided project. Projects on Codecademy are made up of different tasks for a learner to complete. Since projects are open-ended, students may not be able to finish a full project within the Hour of Code. With their accounts, a student’s work is saved to the learning environment so that they can continue working on their projects at a later time.

Course Offerings

Sometimes, the hardest part about starting the journey into coding proficiency is deciding which aspect of coding to pursue. It’s helpful for students to have an idea about which course they’re going to take before starting the Hour of Code. Let’s take a look at some of our course offerings to help you and your students decide how to spend the Hour of Code!

Learn How to Code

Does code seem like a combination of hieroglyphics and complicated puzzles? There’s a lot of misconceptions about programming that make it appear to be difficult and confusing, but the Learn How to Code course is here to show you that programming isn’t as complex as it seems! In this course, you’ll learn the building blocks of programming through engaging activities that don’t require writing any code. You can learn about variables by creating a video game terrain or discover how functions can be used to make a sandwich!

Learn C++

Web browsers and video games and microcontrollers, oh my! What do these technologies all have in common? The answer is C++ code. C++ is a powerful and popular programming language that you can learn how to use in our Learn C++ course. This action packed beginner-friendly course will cover outputting data, compiling and executing code, using variables for data storage, and a whole lot more! Even though it’s called C++, taking this course will be an A++ time.

Web Development: HTML

Websites are all around us! Can you count how many websites you visited today? Web development can be used to make products that support businesses, teach coding (like Codecademy!), or as a personal medium to share with the world a little bit about ourselves. The backbone of web development comes from HTML: HyperText Markup Language. In this course, you will learn about the necessary HTML structures and elements for building a website!

Virtual Reality with A-Frame

Virtual reality may have once seemed like something out of a science fiction movie, but the ability to view and interact with an artificial 3D environment is now a real reality. In this course, you can learn about A-Frame, an open-source webframe that allows you to build virtual reality experiences in your own web browser. And, if you have a VR headset, you can even experience this course in virtual reality!

Note: This course works best if students have some basic understanding of HTML!

Learn Emojicode

We all know that we can use emojis to add some pizzazz to a text, but did you know that there’s a programming language that exclusively uses emojis to develop code? We’re serious! Emojicode is a real programming language that uses emojis to create programs! In our Learn Emojicode course, you’ll learn about important programming topics like basic syntax, variables, and conditionals – all while using emojis!

Other Codecademy Offerings

We hope this helped you in deciding how to spend your Hour of Code! Interested in turning your hour into many hours of code? Our Student Center has additional resources for students who are interested in pursuing learning how to code.

Already taking part in the Hour of Code? Consider joining us for a livestream on December 8 — Codecademy Live: Augmented Reality for the Hour of Code. Curriculum developers Zoe and Alex K. will walk you through making your first augmented reality experience. Get more details and add a reminder to your calendar for this free event here.

Getting stuck happens even to the most experienced programmers. And while we’d love to tell you there’s a magic button that’ll solve all your coding problems, that’s not always the case. The good news? There are a lot of ways to get unstuck. In this article we’ll share a few general practices that you can use the next time you’re stuck on a coding problem.

7 tips for getting unstuck when programming

Don’t panic

First things first: don’t panic. You’ve got this. Errors are not something to fear or be discouraged by — they’re actually opportunities for learning! So take a deep breath to calm yourself down before attempting any of these strategies to get unstuck.

Staying calm is the first step to staying positive. Believe in yourself and your ability to solve problems. You can figure this out, and it’ll be much more enjoyable if you do so from a mindset of learning and growth.

Read the error

Take the time to read the error you received. Not reading the error in detail or not understanding the error are common mistakes that new learners make. By understanding the errors you receive and connecting the dots between each error message and the solution to the problem, you’ll gain valuable coding skills.

When you get an error message while doing an exercise in Codecademy, you’ll discover valuable clues that will direct you to where you can debug your code. For instance, an error message might say: “Oops! The test returned an error. Maybe you have a syntax error or typo.” Now you know what type of error you are on the lookout for.

Check your spelling

Some of the most common errors we have are related to spelling and syntax. This means that somewhere in our code we’ve either misspelled or mislabeled something. An example would be if you forgot to encase your string in a set of quotations. The code won’t be able to read your mind and will not equate string with “string” as you intended.

Other common syntax errors are:

• Incorrect use of brackets and curly braces
• Using the wrong number of equal signs
• Using different cases (i.e., “name” and “Name” are two independent variables)

You can avoid many of these errors by being consistent with your conventions. An example of this is to always capitalize the first letter of your variables — that way you won’t encounter errors for letter case.

Try to program using the styling standards for the language you are using. Style guides will help to reduce your error rate by making your code more readable, which makes it easier to spot your mistakes.

Verbalize the problem

Another helpful strategy to get unstuck involves speaking your problem aloud. Your problem could be a section of code you’re working on, a problem you’re solving for a client, or even a personal project. Make sure you know what the outcome is supposed to be.

By speaking things out loud (even if no one is actually around), you begin to solidify in your mind what you’re trying to accomplish. Then you can circle back to your code and figure out if it does indeed accomplish what you need it to do. If there’s a piece of your code that isn’t assisting you in reaching your goal, that’s probably where the error lies.

Break down the problem

If you are looking at your code as one large block, it can seem like a massive undertaking to hunt down one error. But if you break your code down into smaller blocks, each accomplishing a small task, it will be much easier to figure out where the error is located.

As we talked about before, if you take the time to read and understand the error message, you’ll know what type of error you’re looking for. You can also use the verbalizing tip to talk about what each block of code does and whether that particular error could be within each block of code.

If you’re still stuck, you may need to walk your code backward. This means you reverse each step in your code until you find the error. This tip is especially useful if your code was working just fine in earlier sections. Chances are the error is at the bottom, so you’ll find it quicker by working in reverse.

Google it

Even though we said there wasn’t a magic button to help you get unstuck, sometimes Google is a pretty close alternative. If you’re working outside the Codecademy platform, Google can help you to search for a solution to a particular issue you are having.

Be as specific as possible when you are using Google to get unstuck. You can copy-and-paste your error message directly into Google and then take a look at the search results that seem most applicable to your piece of code. If the results that are returned aren’t helpful, think about how you could reword your search to get closer to the solution.

Let’s look at an example. If you got the error “Assignment to constant variable” you could search for it exactly in Google. But if it didn’t give you the information you needed, you could add the language to your search, or even the specific Codecademy exercise name, in the following sequence of attempts:

1. Assignment to constant variable
2. Assignment to constant variable JavaScript
3. Assignment to constant variable JavaScript Sleep Debt Calculator

Tap into programming resources

If you’re working through Codecademy course material, we have additional resources to help you get unstuck. In each and every exercise, you’ll find a “Get Unstuck” link in the lower right corner. Click on it to find related forum threads, concept reviews, or code solutions.

The Codecademy Forums are also a great place to start practicing the skill of asking questions. Be sure to include the following information in order to maximize the chances of getting unstuck:

• Your formatted code
• The error message you received
• Explain what you don’t understand
• Add any other relevant information

Before asking a question, take a look at the question-and-answer exchanges that are already on the forum. There’s been a lot of discussion and questions from learners that have gone through the same material you’re going through. You might find the answer to your question is already there! In addition to that, you might learn something new and unexpected just by reading through how other learners got unstuck.

If you’re stuck working on a project, you can also leverage Walkthrough Videos. These videos will take you through how to complete the project step-by-step.

Once you progress through the exercises and get unstuck, consider answering some questions on the forum to help other learners. You can lend a helping hand and let others lean on you, just like you leaned on them in the past!