Grades 7-9 students are invited to explore the world of coding in a week-long Summer Coding Club held at C.H. Booth Library from Monday, August 4 through Friday, August 8 at 10 am.

The club, led by Newtown High School students, will introduce students to Python, a multipurpose text-based programming language that is used by beginners and professionals alike for data analysis, scientific computing, software and website development, and more.

Students will learn how programming languages like Python are used in the real world and get hands-on experience in using it themselves. The club is open to all levels of coding experience. Students will need a fully charged laptop for class, as well as an accessible email to register for necessary platforms.

This is the second of two one-week long sessions, with the first session running from July 28-August 1. That session focused on students in grades 4-6 and introduced students to Scratch, a coding platform developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that has people drag-and-drop blocks to create code.

The Summer Coding Club is run by NHS senior Sonya Feder and NHS junior Henry Lynch, who are executive members of the Computer Science Honor Society. They are also members of the high school’s coding club, which provides coding lessons to students at Middle Gate Elementary School.

Both coding clubs were started last year by Henry’s older sister and then NHS student Virgina Lynch, who wanted there to be more challenging computer science education for students of all ages. She initially created the NHS coding club for her Girl Scout Gold Award, but created the club at Booth Library so as to teach a different age group.

With Virginia graduating earlier this year, she spoke to Feder and Henry before the year ended since they were also members of the high school’s coding club.

“She said that running the club [at the library] this summer would be a great idea, and Henry and I said, ‘We’ll totally run this,’” Feder explained.

Now Feder and Henry are continuing both clubs and are excited to teach their peers how to code.

Henry, who previously helped with both the high school and Booth Library coding clubs, said he has been interested in coding “ever since he could remember.” Having grown up with coding alongside his sister, Henry went on to take AP Computer Science at NHS.

Feder’s interest in coding came during the COVID-19 lockdown, as it gave her something to do while everyone was stuck at home. She later took both Python and AP Computer Science when she went into high school, which she said deepened her interest in coding.

“So then I was looking for more ways to use that outside of those classes and the [Computer Science] Honor Society, and I saw the coding club and joined that,” Feder explained.

Feder and Henry, as members of the honor society, also help run Newtown Middle School and Reed Intermediate School nights, where students come over to the high school for one night, are broken off into groups, and taught about programming.

Getting students interested in coding at a young age, Feder said, is extremely important. She feels the longer someone waits, the more prejudice people have around coding: either it is a really complicated subject or something they will never be interested in because they have not tried it.

Feder and students in her grade were introduced to coding when in elementary school, but she said that getting older kids to talk to younger kids creates a sort of “faux mentorship relationship.”

“It makes [younger kids] see, ‘Oh, [programming] is something that’s available for me in school, so I’d love to try and experiment it with myself,’” Feder said. “Or maybe not even take a class, but just use something like Scratch on their own.”

Henry said it helps to teach people programming languages at a young age because Python and Scratch are easy introductory languages.

“They allow you to gain a foothold into many other languages and the thought process that comes with programming,” Henry said.

In the first session, students used Scratch to develop fun and interactive games. Scratch hosts a wide variety of games made by its users for people to play on its website, so students could share the games they made with their friends.

While some students tinkered with adding sound effects to their game, others went all in on designing their game. One student made a virtual pet simulator with a bear, another had a ballerina jump up and down after an orchestra stopped playing music, while a different student had a mermaid sing surrounded by sea creatures.

Giving students prompts and letting them take the reins from there was important to Feder and Henry.

“We provided a five point slide earlier with, not requirements, but suggestions for ways to build on what we talked about before,” Feder said. “It was great to just introduce those new concepts to them.”

Students can register for certain days or for as many days as they would like. Parents/caregivers must remain nearby in the library. To register, visit chboothlibrary.org.

Reporter Jenna Visca can be reached at jenna@thebee.com.