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CS Fundamentals for Elementary Schools
Computer science fosters creativity and teaches students critical thinking skills to become proactive learners, so elementary school is the ideal time for students to be introduced to CS.
Our six Computer Science Fundamentals courses are flexibly designed for teachers new to CS who want to offer accessible and equitable introductory CS courses to their students.
How you teach these courses is up to you - as part of your classroom schedule, weekly lab or library time, supporting lessons for math and language arts, or to make creative projects. Our network of facilitators and Regional Partners offer professional learning workshops across the country to help you get started!
Our six Computer Science Fundamentals courses are flexibly designed for teachers new to CS who want to offer accessible and equitable introductory CS courses to their students.
How you teach these courses is up to you - as part of your classroom schedule, weekly lab or library time, supporting lessons for math and language arts, or to make creative projects. Our network of facilitators and Regional Partners offer professional learning workshops across the country to help you get started!
Why CS Fundamentals?
It’s backed by research.
Six different studies show: children who study computer science perform better in other subjects, excel at problem-solving, and are 17% more likely to attend college.
Recent research also demonstrates positive links between learning computer science with CS Fundamentals and reading comprehension, problem-solving, and planning skills. Students with resourceful teachers scored higher on standardized reading comprehension exams when they did extra CS Fundamentals activities. CS Fundamentals students also outperformed other STEM students at problem-solving executive function and planning skills.
It's easy to get started.
Each course includes comprehensive lesson plans, plugged and unplugged activities, and support resources for teachers. You don't even need a user account to try it out. Once you get a feel for the courses and lesson plans, sign up as a teacher to join the teacher community forums and engage with all the resources at your fingertips. Next, quickly set up a classroom section from your roster or sync with tools like Clever or Google Classroom to view student progress and manage accounts. Then celebrate your students' learning by printing certificates they can bring home.
CS Fundamentals is aligned to the 2017 Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) standards. Lesson plans identify connections to CSTA standards and provide opportunities to support learning in other subjects. CS Fundamentals standards alignments can be accessed in each course of the curriculum.
And, did we mention that it's fun!?
Your students will create their own games, art, and digital stories that they can share - all while developing problem-solving, collaboration, persistence, and computational thinking skills. Every course includes "unplugged" activities that teach computational thinking and digital citizenship skills without computers. See some awesome student creations below!
Interactively explore the water cycle!
Explore angles by making beautiful art!
Animate dinosaurs to talk about pre-history!
Our professional-learning workshops are designed for new-to-CS teachers.
New to teaching computer science? No worries! Most of our teachers have never taught computer science before. Join local teachers for inspiring and hands-on support to implement computer science in your classroom. Our Regional Partners offer high-quality, one-day Code.org workshops for individual teachers or for schoolwide PD. Sign up for a professional development workshop near you!
Join over 100,000 teachers who have participated in our workshops. The majority of our workshop attendees say, 'It's the best professional development I've ever attended.' In fact, 90% of attendees would recommend our program to other teachers!
Selecting the right course
The progression of Courses A-F build upon each other to ensure continuing students stay interested and learn new things. This allows you to use the same course at any grade level for all students, regardless of their experience. Explore the lesson plans and download the curriculum guide for Courses A-F here. All courses make suitable entry points for students. Later courses feature “ramp up” lessons which are intended to introduce or review important concepts from previous courses at an accelerated pace.
Course A
Kindergarten (Supports pre-readers)
13 lessons. Students will learn to program using commands like loops and events. The lessons featured in this course also teach students to meaningfully collaborate with others, investigate different problem-solving techniques, persist in the face of challenging tasks, and learn about internet safety.
Course B
1st grade (Supports pre-readers)
13 lessons. Students learn more sophisticated unplugged activities and work through a greater variety of puzzles. Students will learn the basics of programming, collaboration techniques, investigation and critical thinking skills, persistence in the face of difficulty, and internet safety.
Course C
2nd grade
16 lessons. Students will create programs with sequencing, loops, and events. They will investigate problem-solving techniques and develop strategies for building positive communities both online and offline. By the end of the course, students will create interactive games that they can share.
Course F
5th grade
20 lessons. The course begins by looking at how users make choices in the apps they use. Students then learn to make a variety of Sprite Lab apps that also offer choices for the user. In the later lessons in the course, students will learn more advanced concepts, including variables and “for” loops.
Looking for more news, tips, or support for teaching CS Fundamentals?
Get support and share your feedback!
We are always looking for ways to improve our courses – and we're here to help. If something's not quite working, or you have ideas about features that you'd like to see, we'd love to hear from you!Subscribe for the latest news
Sign up for our monthly emails, which contain the latest news about tools, videos, and other important updates for CS Fundamentals.Chat about CS Fundamentals in the forum
We have forums for educators to discuss and trade ideas about CS Fundamentals and talk about the curriculum. Code.org forums are used for all of our courses K-12.Want to bring CS Fundamentals to your entire school?
Our elementary program has been proven effective in major urban school districts such as Dallas to small rural districts in Iowa. It is the leading K-12 CS curriculum in the U.S. There is no need to hire specialists to teach CS. Our program is uniquely designed to support teachers new to CS while offering the flexibility to evolve lessons to fit student needs. Share this brochure with your school and district administrators, or suggest they take a look at our administrators page specially designed to answer administrators most common questions.
Looking for unplugged lessons??
Go ahead, cut the cord (for a while)! CS education does not always need to be in front of a screen and you don’t need to make device access a barrier to learning computer science concepts. CS Fundamentals Unplugged is a collection of lessons that require no student devices. The lessons can either be used alone or with other computer science lessons on related concepts.
Go to CS Fundamentals Unplugged
Short on time? Looking for self-paced options?
We believe that classroom teachers serve a critical role in ensuring an equitable classroom experience for students. However, we understand that CS Fundamentals is not always taught as a full-classroom experience which is why, In addition to courses A-F, CS Fundamentals offers two self-paced express courses. Both are designed for situations where the teacher is not able to play an active role in engaging students. Express courses do not have unplugged lessons and instead focus on covering content from A-F counterparts in a way that can be delivered without a teacher.
Non-English speaker? Check out our translated courses
Thanks to a global community of volunteer translators, Courses A-F and the Express Course are being translated into languages other than English. Make sure you have your language selected in the dropdown menu and then visit our course catalog to see what we recommend for your language.
