Let’s celebrate our year!
As we approach the end of the year, it is time to reflect on what we achieved in our clubs and celebrate our victories — the big and the small.
We recently asked clubs across Australia how they celebrate with their young people at the end of the year. The ideas were varied, and all sounded like lots of fun.
Highlighting the efforts of your club members is important throughout the year. Celebrating success has many benefits — builds confidence, inspires others, develops pride in work, and builds a community between peers. Recognition of their hard work and dedication validates their efforts and motivates them to continue developing their skills and exploring coding further.
Recognition should take place across the whole year, but at the end, it is wonderful to reflect on 12 months of learning, fun, and to celebrate with each other.
Here are some ideas from our network of volunteers on how to make an end-of-year celebration and showcase event special.
One of our volunteers, Christiana, who runs a Code Club in a school, shared how her club invites important people in the school, such as the principal and head of department, to come to the celebration. All of the coders also invite their friends to come along. At the celebration they award certificates and each young person gets a chance to showcase a project.
Another school Code Club invites families to join the club and have afternoon tea. The students get a chance to showcase their projects and then they teach their families what they have been learning. Code Club leader Cheryl says they also give out awards at the celebration.
Anne, who runs a Code Club in a library, celebrates the end of the year by creating Christmas cards with her coders using Scratch, to send to friends and relatives. The Christmas cards are a fun easy activity to finish the year with and coders can get as creative as they want!
Michele shared a really creative idea. She described her Code Club having an end-of-year coding Olympics! It’s a friendly competition where students participate in various coding challenges like remixing a project, debugging a project, and a time-constraint coding challenge. And even though the year isn’t over Michele is already thinking about next year and how the Code Club will develop a coding timeline throughout the year that will document their progress and collaborative work. How awesome!
What does your club do to celebrate the end of the year? Whatever it is we hope that there is plenty of laughter, talking, sharing, and fun.
Happy coding!
Kaye
Manager, Code Club Australia
