Ada Lovelace Day Celebrations

Tuesday the 13th October is Ada Lovelace Day – an annual celebration of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM).

Thanks to the generous support from ARM, one of Code Club’s Strategic Partners, we have created a brand new Ada-themed Code Club project and school assembly pack, which we hope will be a fun and informative way of helping to shine a spotlight on Ada’s achievements and to help inspire more women and girls into careers in the technology sector.

Assembly plan

We’ve produced a ready to use assembly plan, which will allow schools to celebrate Ada Lovelace Day. The assembly plan focusses on:

• Understanding the story of Ada Lovelace and her achievements
• Reflecting on the significance of computer science
• Considering the future and problems that can be solved by computer science  
• Sharing stories of women in computing today

You can download the assembly plan and introduction notes here.

Ada themed Scratch project

Inspired by Ada’s “poetical science” approach to her study of mathematics, we’ve made a Scratch project which shows how to create a poetry generating machine!

As well as helping to develop core skills such as planning, problem solving and collaboration, the project also introduces the following programming concepts:

• Sequencing Instructions;
• Variables;
• Repetition (loops);
• Lists, and random list items.

Children can complete this project in school, or at home. The project includes step-by-step instructions for creating a basic poetry generator, as well as challenges to consolidate learning and encourage exploration and creativity.

The project also includes volunteer notes explaining how to use the project, and a completed poetry generator to demonstrate to children.

Share your work:

We’d love to view and share a selection of the best Ada projects and poems. If children would like the chance of seeing their work shared on our social media sites, those with a Scratch account can upload their creations to the Scratch website, and tag them with ‘ALD15’. You can also share your children’s creations with us directly on Twitter by tweeting us @CodeClub.

Have a go at “Ada’s Poetry Generator” by visiting jumpto.cc/poetry.

We hope you’ll enjoy using these resources – please share them far and wide and help inspire more children to get excited about coding and Ada Lovelace Day!