St Benedict's Primary School Takes Out International Coding Challenge

When it comes to winning international computer skills competitions, students at St Benedict’s Primary School have cracked the code.

The year 3 and 4 students at the Narrabundah school came first in the National Computer Science School Competition 2017, beating 20,000 students from around the world.

The competition, which saw students use their coding skills to solve various challenges, took place over five weeks, with St Benedict’s achieving a perfect score.

Teacher Melanie Stratford said it’s the first time the school has taken part in the competition.

The school has been running an after school coding club for 30 students this year, learning skills that Ms Stratford said could be applied to many other subjects in the classroom. “It has a whole lot to do with mathematics and there’s a lot to do with angles as well,” she said.

As part of the challenges, students taking part solved problems using a coding language called Python. “I sometimes go home and code games,” year 4 student Riley Wilson said. “I also do some on iPad and code games as well,” fellow year 3 student Sarah Daunt said. Year 3 student Emily Stratford said the whole class was excited by the school’s win. "We all felt very proud,” she said.

Extract from The Queanbeyan Age, 22 Sep 2017 Article and Photo

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