I was one of 12 Young Coders who participated the Young Coders Conference in Tate Modern on February, 2018. Ever since, I have been invited to run workshops at a few Raspberry pi jams. This motivated me to do more workshops and share my ideas with my peers and similar aged children. I was stuck for ideas on where to start next, but then it just hit me: ‘Well, what better place than to do it at school?’ From then on, I started to share my knowledge with the children in my school through the lunchtime club. I am lucky enough to have been given an opportunity to run this. I sincerely thank my headteacher Mrs. Lorimer and my class teacher Miss McPeane who have both supported me through this.

It was agreed with my teacher that every Thursday lunchtime we will hold this computing club that includes simple Micro:bit and Scratch projects. After some time I asked the attendees about how they would like their club to go ahead. I prepare the projects accordingly when they do. Sometimes I relate the projects to the week/day the club is held on (e-g: during Ramadan we did a Scratch project regarding the Islamic festival of Ramadan).

I have 10 students. When I told Ben – one of my students – I got the micro:bits from London, his jaw hit the floor! Later that day, he told me I was really lucky to get them. It made my heart rise! Savannah, another one of my club-attendees, once mistook Wednesday for Thursday and she was upset that she couldn’t go to the club that day. Trudy, another attendee, interviewed me for a magazine she runs, known as the Meeply Weekly. I take feedback from them regularly which has shown me how enthusiastic they have been during this time.

In the future I’m going to run the same club, but bigger, with more participants. I’m also going to try running more clubs in other schools as well.

Posted by Avni