Make a Custom Coding Challenge for a Beginner
- Ages 8-9
- Ages 10-12
Tutorials teach a child to follow steps. A challenge teaches them to work something out, and the difference shows up the first time something breaks.
Ages 8 to 12
Time 10 minutes to write, 45 to attempt
You'll need Whatever your child already codes in, and a chatbot on your account
How it goes
- List what they can already do. Move a sprite, use a loop, respond to a key press. Be specific.
- Add exactly one new idea. A variable, or a condition, or a list. One.
- Ask for the brief, using the prompt below. A brief describes what the finished thing does, never how.
- Hand it over and leave. Twenty minutes of struggling is the lesson.
- When they are stuck, use the hint prompt from asking for hints instead of answers.
- Have them explain the new idea back to you when it works.
The prompt
My 10-year-old can make a Scratch sprite move with arrow keys and play a sound. Write a challenge that requires her to learn variables for the first time. Describe only what the finished project should do, in five bullet points, as a brief. Do not describe any blocks, code, or steps. Add three “extra credit” additions.
What a good result looks like
A good brief describes behaviour only: The score starts at zero. Every time the cat touches an apple the score goes up by one and the apple moves somewhere new. When the score reaches ten, the sprite says “done”. No blocks, no variables named, no steps.
If the brief mentions any Scratch block by name, it has become a tutorial. Ask again with a blunter instruction. And check the one-new-idea rule honestly: a brief needing variables, lists, and cloning is three challenges pretending to be one.
Check it before you use it
- Does it need only one new idea? Briefs often smuggle in three. Cut back to one.
- Is it possible in their tool? Models suggest things Scratch cannot do, or that need an extension.
- No solution in the brief? Read it and check the how has not crept in.
Keep the human part
Sitting nearby doing your own thing while your child struggles productively is a real skill and an uncomfortable one. The twenty minutes before they ask for help is where the learning is.
If it is not working
If your child is stuck for more than twenty minutes with no progress at all, the gap between what they can do and what the brief needs was too wide. Add a stepping stone rather than a hint: a smaller challenge using the same new idea in an easier context.
If they finish in five minutes, the new idea was already known. Ask what they found hard; if the answer is nothing, take the extra-credit additions and make them the next brief.
One thing to watch
If your child pastes the brief into a chatbot and asks for the code, the challenge is over. Agree in advance that code they cannot explain gets deleted, which is the rule in learning to code with AI.
Related: design a robot helper is the unplugged version of the same planning skill.
