CSTA 2025 has over 200 sessions dedicated to expanding knowledge in CS education. Putting together your conference schedule can be overwhelming, which is why the CSTA 2025 Conference Committee has made specific recommendations based on what you may be looking for. Here are six sessions that elementary school educators won’t want to miss.
Bridging the Gap: Transitioning from Blocks to Text with MakeCode Arcade
July 10, 10:30 AM-11:30 AM ET
Breakout session presented by Polly Smith, Sara Smolevitz, Bill Marsland
In this hands-on session, participants will explore how to use MakeCode Arcade’s innovative coding platform to help students make the transition from block-based to text-based coding.
Research shows that block coding establishes a solid foundation in computer science principles. It helps students grasp key concepts without the complexities of syntax and punctuation. As learners become comfortable with programming concepts in visual environments, guiding them toward text-based coding is essential for enhancing their computational thinking skills and preparing them for advanced programming languages. MakeCode Arcade provides an accessible, fun, and educational way for students to make this leap, fostering a smoother transition while keeping coding engaging and interactive.
In this session, participants will be guided through the affordances and nuances of the blocks and text editors in MakeCode Arcade, exploring tips and tricks the presenters have acquired from their own experience with the tool. They will engage in a hands-on activity that demonstrates the toggle feature that lets students view coding concepts they know in a new format, allowing them to focus on intricacies in syntax and code structure.
Participants will leave with strategies for using MakeCode Arcade to support students in transitioning to text-based coding, boosting their confidence in coding with text, and resources for creating personally meaningful projects that incorporate both block and text coding.
Coding as a Language of Inclusion
July 8, 3:30 PM-4:30 PM ET
Breakout session presented by Marina Pisto-Lombardo and Alana Winnick
Explore how a 3rd-grade playwriting project evolved into a digital storytelling experience that champions equity. By combining coding with creative writing, this project enabled English Language Learners and students with different learning preferences to communicate and collaborate. The result? A classroom where students of all backgrounds felt included, and coding became an accessible tool for sharing diverse stories and building community. Attendees will gain actionable strategies and mini-lesson ideas to foster an inclusive coding project that engages students from all backgrounds.
Tiny Tech, Big Impact: Engineering Everyday Gadgets with Micro:bits
July 11, 12:00 PM-3:00 PM ET
Workshop presented by Lindsay Munoz and Darren Alcala
This workshop will empower educators to seamlessly integrate computer science into their science and engineering curricula using micro:bits. By exploring the versatility of micro:bits, participants will gain the knowledge and skills to enhance student learning through engaging, hands-on engineering while learning a variety of computer science concepts.
The workshop will delve into the importance of integrating computer science in a science and engineering classroom and how that can be easily facilitated through the use of micro:bits. Participants will spend the majority of the time engaging in engineering and physical coding activities to understand how micro:bits can be used to explore real-world phenomena. Through utilizing the micro:bit’s hardware components and sensors, and learning about fundamental computer science concepts such as algorithms, variables, loops, conditionals and functions, participants will explore how various real-world objects (i.e. step counters, noise monitor, night lights, thermostats, text messengers, music sync lights) function and how they can be recreated using a micro:bit. By the end of the workshop, participants will be inspired to incorporate computer science into their classrooms, fostering students’ computational thinking skills and preparing them for a technology-driven future.
Hands-On Code: Building Skills with No Devices
July 9, 9:00 AM-10:00 AM ET
Breakout session presented by Paige Besthoff
In this interactive session, participants will explore fun, hands-on activities that teach fundamental coding and computational thinking skills—all without the use of screens. These unplugged activities are accessible to all students, regardless of their reading level, language proficiency, or background knowledge. Whether students are just beginning their learning journey or are experienced problem solvers, these engaging exercises foster collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking. Attendees will leave with practical strategies and resources to bring inclusive, unplugged coding into their classrooms.
Using Design Thinking to Create Robotic Solutions to Real-World Problems in Elementary School
July 10, 2:30 PM-3:30 PM ET
Breakout session presented by Stephanie Aseltine and Amber Melander
Design thinking is a powerful tool that helps students to use what they have learned across the curriculum to solve difficult problems (Spencer, 2019). Our youngest engineers have the most innovative ideas, and using design thinking helps them to hone those ideas into plausible solutions to real-world problems. This workshop is designed to equip educators with innovative strategies to enhance their teaching practices by integrating design thinking, equity sharing protocols, robotics, and coding into their curricula. Participants will explore how to leverage these dynamic methodologies to engage students in solving real-world problems through hands-on robotic projects. This workshop provides educators with the tools and techniques to introduce design thinking and robotics into their classrooms. Design thinking, with its emphasis on empathy, ideation, and iteration, pairs seamlessly with robotics to create an engaging, project-based learning experience. By focusing on real-world problems, educators will learn how to guide students through the process of identifying issues, brainstorming solutions, and building functional robotic prototypes. Participants will engage with a variety of robotic and/or coding tools allowing them to discover what will work best in their classroom setting.
Empowering Emerging Readers: Using Computational Thinking and Robotics to Support Decoding
July 10, 9:40 AM-10:00 AM ET
Mini session presented by Melanie Blanton and Raymond Anacaya
Join us in this session as we share how computational thinking and robotics can be utilized to broaden access to computer science in early childhood and elementary classrooms while being supportive of reading instruction and intervention. We will give an overview of our work and provide insights for using robots to support literacy development, specifically targeting skills to support decoding. We will include classroom tips and tricks from a current interventionist and literacy teacher as well as provide links to sample activities that can be used as is during small groups and centers or adapted for your elementary classroom and preferred bot type. Come to learn more about how strengthening computational thinking skills can dovetail with decoding skills, and leave with literacy lesson ideas to use or share.
Register for CSTA 2025
Be sure to head to the full conference program to read more about these recommendations and plan which sessions you want to attend. If you haven’t registered for the annual conference yet, head to the CSTA 2025 website to secure your spot. We are excited to see you there!