Bringing coding to life in elementary classrooms through game-based learning

Jonathan Schor, co-founder and CEO of CodeMonkey Studios, explores how game-based coding education can help younger learners build essential life and career skills through accessible, engaging digital tools. Drawing on his experience as a developer and EdTech entrepreneur, Schor outlines practical strategies for bringing coding into elementary classrooms and highlights the long-term value of coding fluency in the early years.

Prior to founding CodeMonkey, he worked as a software developer and team leader, and participated in the EdTech accelerator MindCET. Under his leadership, CodeMonkey has become a globally recognized platform for K -12 coding education.

The elementary school classroom is a special place that requires a lot of care and a great deal of work. The job of an elementary school teacher isn’t merely to teach, it’s also to get kids engaged, to infuse them with enthusiasm about the world around them and the possibilities they have ahead of them. Most importantly, it’s to help kids to learn to love learning itself.

All this is easy to say but can be difficult to put into practice, especially with certain classes that kids (and most adults) see as rather “dry” and uninteresting. And software programming is one of the topics people rarely see as something exciting.

So, how does bringing coding to life in elementary classrooms even work? As with many other niches, game-based learning can be a great way to get kids engaged in a topic, but how does this work with coding exactly?

 Coding games and the gamification of software programming

Many topics and niches are fairly easy to gamify, but some feel inherently too complex and technical, especially for elementary school. The same can be said about programming as a whole, too, but when talking about coding games for young kids, we’re not talking about teaching them C++ from the get-go.

Instead, coding games for kids are designed more in the vein of puzzles and constructors. Instead of teaching kids to memorize endless strings of code and a whole dictionary of programming terminology, coding games guide children through the basic principles of coding via fun gaming courses that get them to construct things and complete challenges.

Courses, such as the “Banana Tales” of CodeMonkey, for example, may look like “video games” at first glance, and they technically are, but they are specifically designed to give kids a basic understanding of how building code works while keeping them entertained and engaged in a fun way. For instance, CodeMonkey's recent article outlines practical strategies for integrating coding into elementary classrooms.

Such coding games are typically colorful and fun, as the right graphics play a big role in grabbing the kids’ attention. Although, of course, it’s also important to match the right games for the right age group, as some games can feel “too silly” for older kids. That’s why most good coding game programs divide their courses into age ranges, slowly getting kids to move through the K-8 years and beyond.

Once kids get involved in the coding game courses, the next step is to gently guide them through the different difficulty ranges and age groups. And, with each subsequent course, kids get to see how the fun construction games they have been playing actually correlate directly to programming languages and coding principles. Similar to how a constructor doesn’t “teach” architecture directly, but gets kids to understand its basic principles early on.

This slow advance from basic games to actual coding requires some careful balancing, of course. That’s especially true in larger classrooms, as some kids will advance faster than others, and what’s too boring for some can be overly difficult for others, to the point of putting them off the whole exercise altogether.

How to implement coding education and games in the elementary classroom?

Introducing game-based coding to an elementary school classroom can be challenging. In fact, often the challenges start with convincing the school boards and parents that this is a good addition to the curriculum in the first place. Explaining the benefits of teaching code from an early age is usually easy, and we’ll touch upon that below as well.

However, showing that coding games are actually suitable for kids in elementary school can be tricky without the right course on hand, and it’s often trickier to convince the adults than to get the kids hooked into the course. In addition to showing them the benefits of the course, it’s also key to show that it can be engaging and effective for children at that age.

Once you get the green light, however, the rest comes down to exactly how fast and how well you introduce the course to the kids in your classes. Here are a few practical tips:

1. Pick the right gaming course for your classroom

Most code game programs for kids are designed to function for the entirety of the K-8 bracket. CodeMonkey is a prime example of that. Even then, however, the different courses in the programs are suitable for different age groups in the K-8 range. The easiest beginner courses are suitable for kids in and before first grade, but will be too boring, easy, and “too childish” for kids in seventh and eighth grade, and vice versa.

2. Be prepared to handle groups with mixed skill levels

This is especially true if you’re going to have kids of mixed ages in your class. Even if not, however, it’s normal for some kids to outpace others, as in any other class. Fortunately, this can be easily mitigated in different ways. You can either have kids play certain games in groups and help each other out, or you can have different courses from the same program ready for the kids who are advancing a bit faster than others.

3. Approach the process more like “guiding” rather than “teaching”

Good code game courses are designed to teach kids gradually, as they move through the different parts and levels of the games. There are things to memorize and skills that need to be learned and transferred to future challenges within the course, but the coding games themselves are made to teach those skills and know-how.

Instead, what tutors usually need to do is help guide kids through the course, push them gently when needed, offer help when necessary, and help make the learning process smooth and enjoyable overall. Such coding games are designed to get more and more challenging over time, unlike most normal video games that just plateau at one point and just deliver satisfaction through repetition. Instead, coding games get increasingly more challenging with time, so guidance is often needed.

4. Get the parents involved

Homework in most other classes is meant to be easily doable by anyone who has paid attention in class, as homework is just repeatedly practicing what has been taught in class. With coding games, there is also often a need for practicing at home, but having a tutor nearby is just as important at home as it is in class. Getting the kids’ parents involved is the best way to take care of that, so it’s good to discuss it with them first and be ready to offer extra support for kids who won’t have parental assistance at home.

The benefits of game-based learning in elementary school

Teaching kids how to code has one clear-cut benefit everyone can see right away, and it is that coding is a great career skill later in life. However, this isn’t really the main reason to start teaching kids coding in elementary school. It’s still beneficial for that goal, as learning the basics early on will help them learn programming later on, but the main goal of elementary school coding classes it to teach certain basic life skills people in any profession and area of life need to have.

Gamification fosters student motivation

Unlike most standard video games that only offer modest challenge and then quickly transition to repetition for getting quick and easy dopamine hits, coding games are designed to offer both 1) constantly increasing challenges and 2) the gratification of actually building and accomplishing something significant.

This makes them a great tool for building up students’ resilience and motivation in the face of challenging situations, which are great traits to have for any and all future classes, work, and life situations.  

Coding games spark up students’ creativity

Similar to constructors, coding games don’t just give kids content to process, but get them to create things for themselves. This gets especially true as time goes by and kids get to do more complicated things with the courses. This gives kids not just the freedom but the motivation to express their creativity and find creative ways to circumvent certain challenges or accomplish given tasks.

Coding reinforces logical thinking

This is one of the more obvious benefits of coding games, as everyone associates programming with math and logic skills anyway. And, it is true, many of the challenges coding games offer kids require not just creativity but a lot of logical thinking. And the elementary school years are the best time period to work on kids’ logical thinking skills.

Coding games help build a foundational understanding of programming concepts

While an elementary school coding course won’t turn fourth graders into programmers, it does help build a foundational understanding of programming concepts. This can be invaluable for all kids later on in life, whether or not they turn to programming as a career path, simply because coding is likely to become a necessary foundational knowledge for all people in the future.

Similar to how learning Word and Excel used to be “professional skills” in the 90s, but are now basics everyone should be able to handle, coding is set to be that in the very near future.

Coding encourages parent involvement

Many parents don’t want to bother involving themselves in their kids’ education, but every tutor knows that the best results are accomplished when kids, teachers, and parents work together. Having parents help out with the coding courses at home is a great way to not only help kids advance in that particular class but to foster the right learning environment for them both at school and at home.