Students in 4th, 5th, and 6th grades are in the "sweet spot" for Bitsbox; they can read and write, and most can type fairly well.
Tip: Save classroom time by pre-loading the Bitsbox Hour of Code website on each computer. Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer 11 are all web browsers that work great with Bitsbox. Open bitsbox.com/go on each machine.
Lead a five-minute discussion about programming and building apps with students before they start working on the computers. You might ask the following questions:
Who knows what an app is?
What are some apps that you've used before?
Who creates apps and how are they created?
Wrap up the discussion by telling students that they'll be building their own simple apps by writing computer code.
Send students to their computers and tell them to navigate to bitsbox.com/go
As students are working through the online tutorial app, hand out the Let's App! booklets.
Encourage students to choose an app from the booklet to work on. Recommending that they start with Dancin' Hal (the first app) is probably a good idea.
If students complete their chosen app and there's still time left, encourage them to build another app from the booklet.