Primary School Coding Challenge
Published: Friday, May 31st, 2019 at 11:54 AM
An invitation to participate in the Heathrow Primary School Challenge 2019
We would like to invite you to participate in the Heathrow Primary School Challenge, which will take place from 4 September to 18 October 2019.
Heathrow is committed to raising the aspirations and academic achievement of young people in the local boroughs of Ealing, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Slough, South Buckinghamshire, Spelthorne, and Windsor & Maidenhead. Through the Primary School Challenge, we hope to encourage your students to consider careers at Heathrow, as well as demonstrating how the curriculum is aligned to careers and skills needed at the airport.
The Challenge is a free, half day experience for all of Year 6 which is delivered in your school. Students will receive a presentation about Heathrow and how coding is utilised at the airport. They will work in small groups to map a journey of their chosen freight. Students will use ‘Scratch’ to code different routes; helping them to understand the journey of cargo from warehouse to Heathrow and onto the hold of a plane.
The activity, which is delivered by education charity Spark! and Heathrow volunteers, provides an enjoyable way for young people to develop their coding and communication skills, and encourages teamworking.
We are also inviting teachers to express interest in attending an optional training session in November or December, so teachers can deliver the Challenge activity in their school from 2020. We have been delivering the Primary School Challenge for a number of years now and the time is right to make this a teacher-led programme, whilst we develop a new and exciting suite of activities for schools which will be announced later in the year. Further details of the teacher training sessions will be sent in July.
What next?
The Challenge is for the whole of Year 6. We will aim to allocate a sufficient number of sessions to deliver the programme to your whole year group based on the class sizes you provide in your expression of interest.
Please complete and return the Expression of Interest form by 14th June. Places will be allocated on a first come basis and you will receive confirmation by 28th June