Ridgefield fifth-graders learn computer programming by teaching rocks to dance

Ridgefield — Sunset Ridge Intermediate School teacher Nam Nguyen spent an early day this school year teaching his computer science fifth-graders to dance. Sort of. Their project on a recent school day was to learn the “Earth Dance,” in which a cartoon shows multiple characters mimicking each other’s dance moves. The students’ assignment was to make one character dance, followed by the other cartoon characters copying the dance. The students did this by programming in block coding. Computer science electives at Sunset Ridge Intermediate School and View Ridge Middle School are popular and fill up quickly, so classes are designed for students to enter the courses at any given stage or grade level without a lot of prerequisites. “Because of development and how intimidating computer science can be, a lot of students worried about whether they were just going to sit here and code the whole time, line code,” Nguyen said in a release from the district. “Instead, they’re engaged in creative tasks, working with other students at their tables to drag and drop code blocks, finding the right pieces to solve a logic puzzle.”