Coding Quest is Canada’s largest classroom-based coding program available to publicly funded schools in English and French. It is a free experiential learning program developed by The Learning Partnership for students from Grades 1 to 8.
 
Coding Quest enriches student learning by adding coding and game creation to reflect changing technology and learning skills necessary for the future workforce, including core global competencies like critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication. The federal and provincial governments across Canada are recognizing this need and are making it a priority to invest in digital infrastructure and STEM.

Coding skills, computational thinking and problem solving are increasingly in demand within our ever-changing economy. Computer literacy, independence, innovation and self-management are keys to success in the world of work. This program enables students to develop global competencies and essential skills in computer literacy, computational thinking, entrepreneurship, problem solving, and critical thinking.
 
Coding is an essential universal language that transcends cultural, linguistic and geographic boundaries in a technology-driven and connected world. Coding is a skill that is increasingly in demand by employers.

Coding Quest provides ample professional development opportunities to educators and enhances teacher capacity through its available educational resources, eLearning site, teacher training workshops -- live-streamed and virtual -- and follow-up support delivered by experienced coding educators. 
 
Teaching Coding Quest is easy and fun -- you don’t have to be a coding expert!
 
Curriculum-linked resources and step-by-step lesson plans are available online for teaching both coding and the curriculum.

Coding Quest aligns with provincial curricula; engages students through technology; provides opportunity for cross-curricular learning; integrates learning in science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM) and global competencies; and creates a collaborative learning environment through teamwork and problem solving.
 
The new Coding Quest is a condensed program, critical inquiry based, and requires 4-5 hours of direct teaching time.  It offers students the opportunity to engage in deeper learning through individual and group work.

Experiential learning enables students to put theory into practice within real-world contexts, helping them to ‘learn by doing’ within a structured, supportive and inclusive environment. Through experiential learning opportunities, learning is accelerated, engagement is enhanced, students gain deeper understanding of subject matter and students develop and apply critical thinking skills. Experiential learning is personal and creates an opportunity to make lessons accessible to everyone.

The differences between the previous and new Coding Quest programs include:

• The program is now split into 2 distinct programs: Coding Quest - Grades 1 to 3 and Coding Quest - Grades 4-8. Each has their own set of modules and resources within them. 
• The Coding Quest - Grades 1 to 3 program replaces the Coding Trek program. 
• For the Coding Quest - Grades 1-3 program, the inclusion of Dash’s Neighbourhood - a new playful 3D coding environment - where students will love creating and exploring, using a virtual robot named Dash, while building coding literacy. Students are tasked with creating a story using Dash’s Neighbourhood as the coding platform. 
• For the Coding Quest - Grades 4-8 program, students are able to create, using Scratch 3.0, two different types of projects: Stories or Video Games. Both have their own set of resources to complete the program. 
• The Coding Quest program now culminates at the end through a Virtual Showcase - where teachers will showcase their students work virtually online. Alternatively, if there are in-person classes, an in-class showcase is also encouraged. 

There is no cost to the program. Coding Quest is free to all publicly-funded schools across Canada.

Coding Quest is a bilingual program, available in both English and French, with teaching resources available in both languages.

Coding Quest is available to all publicly-funded schools across Canada.

Teacher training workshops are one hour long for Coding Quest Grades 1 to 3 and 2-one hour sessions for Coding Quest Grades 4 to 8. The Coding Quest program is designed to be offered during class time. Length of time will vary from teacher to teacher depending on lesson options, availability and access to technology, but roughly it takes five hours of classroom time.

Coding Quest is a program for students from Grades 1 to 8. The program was designed to support the curriculum of those grades. There are two Coding Quest programs:
 
Coding Quest for Grades 1 to 3 uses Dash’s Neighbourhood - a playful 3D environment - where students will love creating and exploring, using a virtual robot named Dash, while building coding literacy. 
 
Coding Quest for Grades 4 to 8 is founded on the free, web-based program Scratch, developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. 

Teachers can register for Grades 1 to 3 here and Grades 4 to 8 here.
 
Once registered, teachers will have full access to a dashboard where they can sign up for comprehensive training sessions and access lesson plans and teacher resources.

Coding Quest provides detailed lesson plans and resources, supports existing curriculum, fulfills Ministry of Education mandates, and supports the development of learning skills. 
 
Following an inquiry model, teachers find it easy to deliver and integrate Coding Quest into their own curriculum where programming is customized to student ability. It provides a flexible curriculum framework tailored to teachers’ preferences and levels of expertise. 
 
There are two versions of Coding Quest: one for Grades 4 to 8 which offers story-telling or game design streams using Scratch; and one for Grades 1 to 3, which is a story-telling program using Dash’s Neighbourhood.

Once students complete a program, they would submit materials to their teachers including: their project file (either Dash’s Project Key or Scratch’s Project) and the video recording of their story or video game. This will be used as part of your class’ virtual showcase and displaying all student work in one learning environment (e.g. Google Classroom, D2L, etc). 
 
If students have completed the Coding Quest Grades 1-3 program, they can then complete the Coding Quest Grades 4-8 program with their teacher. The progression from one program level to another allows students to practice their coding skills in different programming platforms; from Dash’s Neighbourhood in Grades 1-3 to Scratch 3.0 in Grades 4-8. This allows them to explore various programming concepts as they complete the coding challenges and projects within Coding Quest.

The unique, personal, one-time use Teacher Token provided to you during training registration is used to convert a regular Class Connect teacher account from a 30-day free trial to a free full year subscription. Once the Teacher Token is used, you can click on “Manage Subscription” on the Class Connect classrooms tab to check when your subscription ends. 
 
If you are using Class Connect to teach summer school, and you have created classrooms and students, you may still use your account in the fall when regular classes resume as long as your subscription is still valid throughout the school year. Simply delete classrooms and students and create new ones for the upcoming school year in order to use it to run the Coding Quest program with your students. 

If you have any questions, please email codingquest@thelearningpartnership.ca