Back-to-school set
The First Two Weeks
Build classroom culture and computational thinking at the same time. These start-of-year lessons turn norms, names, and getting-to-know-you routines into real computing.
8 lessons · Grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12 · ~6 hr total
The first weeks of school are spent building routines anyway — so build the thinking too. Each of these lessons takes a start-of-year ritual (setting norms, learning names, mapping who knows whom, lab safety, makerspace procedures) and reveals the computing idea hiding inside it: algorithms, data, networks, binary, state machines. Students leave with a working classroom culture and a first taste of the ideas you’ll return to all year.
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2026-08 · Unplugged · 45 min
The Classroom Norms Algorithm
On day one, students co-write class norms as precise if-then rules a 'classroom robot' would follow — turning community-building into conditionals, and discovering that vague rules have loopholes the way buggy code has edge cases.
ELA · Social Studies — grades 3-5, 6-8
Open lesson → -
2026-08 · Unplugged + plugged · 45 min
Get-to-Know-You Data Graph
A first-week class survey becomes a lesson in data: students collect responses, build a bar graph, and then ask the question that matters most — who got counted, who didn't, and what the graph does and doesn't say about the class.
Math · Social Studies — grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8
Open lesson → -
2026-08 · Unplugged + plugged · 50 min
The Human Network Handshake
A first-week mixer becomes a model of how information (or a rumor, or a cold) spreads through a network — students greet by a rule, track who's 'reached' each round, and discover exponential growth and why networks behave the way they do.
Science · Math · CS/Technology — grades 6-8, 9-12
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2026-08 · Unplugged · 40 min
Binary Name Badges
First-day name badges with a twist: students encode their initial in binary dots, learning base-2 place value while making something to wear — and discover the simple hidden code that every device they'll one day design, build, and improve is quietly built from.
Math · Elementary (multi-subject) · CS/Technology — grades K-2, 3-5
Open lesson → -
2026-08 · Unplugged · 35 min
Storybook Trait Sort
After a first-week read-aloud, the youngest students sort storybook characters with yes/no questions about traits — building their first decision tree, the same way computers (and readers) classify, and noticing how the questions you ask decide the answer.
ELA · Elementary (multi-subject) — grades K-2
Open lesson → -
2026-08 · Unplugged · 40 min
Picture-Day Pixel Art
Students make grid 'pixel' self-portraits for the start of the year, discovering that pictures are just colored squares in rows and columns — and that you can describe an image precisely enough for someone else to rebuild it exactly, the way a screen does.
Elementary (multi-subject) · Math — grades K-2, 3-5
Open lesson → -
2026-08 · Unplugged + plugged · 50 min
The Lab-Safety State Machine
The first-week lab-safety talk, rebuilt as a finite state machine: students map the states of a lab session and the checkpoint conditions that gate each transition, then test the model against unsafe scenarios it must refuse to advance.
Science · CS/Technology — grades 9-12
Open lesson → -
2026-08 · Unplugged · 50 min
Makerspace Setup: Plan the Build
To open the year's makerspace or science station, students write the setup as a precise, testable build procedure — an engineering-design and technical-writing task where a missing or out-of-order step shows up the moment a teammate runs it literally.
Science · CTE/Other — grades 3-5, 6-8
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