Code Club, a non­-profit which builds a community of volunteers who share their passion for digital making with children and teachers across the UK, has worked with their strategic partners at ARM to create an Ada­-themed school assembly plan and coding project (zip file) for teachers.

The assembly plan asks children to think about the role of technology in their lives and informs them about the story of Ada Lovelace, revealing that the roots of the computer revolution didn’t stem from men sitting in basements drinking coffee, but from a ​mother-­of-­three who lived over 160 years ago.

Inspired by Ada’s “poetical science” approach to her study of Mathematics, Code Club’s coding project uses the block-­based coding language Scratch to create a poetry-generating machine. The project, Ada’s Poetry Generator, includes step-­by-­step instructions for creating a basic poetry generator, as well as challenges to consolidate learning and encourage exploration and creativity. It can be used in Computing classes, and focuses on developing core skills such as planning, problem-solving and collaboration, as well as introducing computer programming concepts such as variables and loops.

The project can also be used by English teachers, as the poetry generator introduces verbs, adverbs, nouns and adjectives, giving examples of each and using them in a constructed sentence. Code Club have designed the resource so that it can be used as a Literacy display in the classroom.

Code Club are encouraging teachers and students to share their completed Ada projects online. Those with an online Scratch account can upload their creations to the Scratch website and tag them with ‘ALD15’. Teachers are also encouraged to share pupils’ creations on Twitter by tweeting @CodeClub and @InnovateMySchl.

Visit www.codeclub.org.uk or contact [email protected] for more information.