Introduction
for teachers
Welcome to Time2Code from Craig’n’Dave. We have been teaching teenagers to code since 1997, and this scheme of learning is the result of continual reflection and trying different methods and pedagogies over the years. This scheme works. We know that because our own students of all abilities have been incredibly successful learning to code and achieved fantastic grades just using Time2Code.
These programming tutorials are for schools that have delivered the Key Stage 3 English National Curriculum. That means students should already be familiar with lists, arrays, procedures, and functions in addition to the basic programming constructs of sequence, selection, and repetition using a text-based language. Although these Key Stage 3 concepts are revisited from the very start, the learning curve is deliberately steeper and progressive as a result of student’s prior learning.
Time2Code is for teachers that want to challenge their students, and in doing so achieve higher grades. It is not for teachers who want their students to find the work easy. Learning should be difficult. It should embrace new and demanding problems because it is only when we are stuck that we learn something new.
Unique to Time2Code is a "functions first approach". Although it feels counter-intuitive, students that are exposed to modular programming from the start become better, more confident programmers in the end. If your experience to date is that students find using subprograms and data structures too hard, it is simply because they were not taught to structure their programs early enough in their learning journey and need a lot more practice.
Subprograms provide decomposition. It makes programs easier to write, not harder. It is this high performance learning approach that challenges established, ingrained and out-dated practices, meaning Time2Code is a new, more successful way for students to learn to code.
Now it's time to discover how we suggest delivering Time2Code with students...
