Coding Galaxy

Coding Galaxy is an app for students in K-3 designed to teach basic elements of coding through 20 independent and five collaborative learning missions. There's also a competitive esports option available. The app follows the familiar pattern of many other learn-to-code puzzle apps: Students have to put together a string of code blocks (e.g., turn left, jump, etc.) to navigate through to an end goal. The app can be used by itself, or teachers can register and create an online classroom through the teacher dashboard to monitor student progress. 

Coding Galaxy stands out a bit from the many other puzzle-based coding apps because of the (paid) computational thinking curriculum available to teachers who sign up. The handouts that go with each lesson plan include role-plays, discussions, and hands-on physical activities to help students develop a deeper understanding of key concepts in computational thinking without the app. These unplugged (offline) activities focus on concepts such as sequencing, decomposition, loops, pattern recognition (abstraction), parallelism, and collaboration. Lessons are designed to meet standards from the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) in computational thinking and computing practice and programming. Teachers who sign up for a free 14-day trial can get access to the first three lessons from the curriculum.