Making the Grade: Why Code.org curriculum replaced Swift Playgrounds in my coding classes

I am in the midst of my third year of teaching coding at my school to nine and ten years old students, and I made a significant change this year after reflecting over the last two cycles. As I began lesson planning over Christmas break, I made a list of what I liked about Swift Playgrounds and what I didn't like. As I began to think through it, I realized that what I didn't like about Learn to Code 1 in Swift Playgrounds was how quickly the difficulty went up. By class five, students who didn't ...