A draft curriculum from Zero Day Camp; and we want your feedback before it goes wide.

Who gets to play? That’s the question at the center of Play for All, a four-lesson computer science unit built around a single MakeCode Arcade game called Catch It! Students don’t build a game from a blank screen. They read one, break it down, and rebuild it so more people can actually play it. Along the way, they pick up real computational thinking skills and a habit that matters just as much: designing with accessibility in mind from the start.

The unit is aligned to the NYS K–12 Computer Science and Digital Fluency Standards (grades 4–6 band) and was written for classrooms with a novice or non-CS classroom teacher, students with a wide range of physical and learning needs, and multilingual learners.

How the unit works

Each of the four 40-minute lessons follows the PRIMM framework (Predict, Run, Investigate, Modify):

1. What Makes a Playable Game? – Students predict and run Catch It! and start noticing what makes a game fun (or frustrating) to play.
2. Designing for Differences — Small groups research one category of disability — motor, vision, hearing, or cognitive — and how it shapes the experience of playing a game.
3. Improving the Game — Students investigate the code behind Catch It!, tracing how features like sound cues, adjustable speed, and pause functionality are built.
4. Catch It! Revisited — Groups modify their own copy of the game to better support the player type they studied, then play-test each other’s builds.

By the end, every group has compared an inaccessible version of the game to an accessible one and made their own hands-on changes.

What’s included

• Full lesson plans, an at-a-glance unit table, and slide decks for all four lessons
• Multilingual vocabulary sheets for the unit’s core coding terms, in English, Spanish, Chinese (Simplified), Arabic, Bengali, and Haitian Creole
• Teacher support videos covering the MakeCode Arcade environment, keyboard shortcuts, and a walkthrough of the Catch It! code
• Four accessibility explainer videos (motor, vision, hearing, cognitive) plus an intro overview, scripted for grades 4–7
• An extension activity on building custom game controllers
• Sample code, including a sound-based version of Catch It! where players can catch stars by tone alone
• Printable code snippet cards, role cards, and a PRIMM one-pager
• Open Source Accessibility Tools – Blockly Accessible Switch Interface (BASI), Keyboard Arcade Sprite Editor, and Starter CS Communication Boards.

A note on where things stand

This is a working draft. A couple of pieces aren’t classroom-ready yet:

• The Arabic and Bengali vocabulary sheets are first drafts and need a native speaker or professional translator to review before they reach students.
• The explainer videos are in their first drafts with future iterations planned based on community feedback.

Access the curriculum

Everything lives in one shared Google Drive folder:

➡️ Play for All — full unit folder

Direct links to specific pieces:

• Unit Introduction & standards alignment
• Lesson 1: What Makes a Playable Game
• Lesson 2: Designing for Differences
• Lesson 3: Improving the Game
• Lesson 4: Catch It! Revisited
• Multilingual vocabulary sheets
• Custom Controllers extension activity
• Additional resources: PRIMM explainer, coding cards, role cards
• Starter code files

All files are viewable and copyable. Make a copy into your own Drive before editing.

We want to hear from you

This unit gets better with classroom mileage. If you teach it, or even just read through it, we’d like to know:

• Did the 40-minute pacing hold up in your classroom?
• Did the accessibility videos resonate with your students?
• If you or a colleague speaks Arabic or Bengali, would you be willing to look over those vocabulary sheets?
• Did your students get to make their own accessible games?
• Are there other resources you need included?
• Did you try the extension custom controller activities?
• Did you or a student run into anything hard to read or navigate in the PDFs or handouts — font, contrast, screen reader, or otherwise?

Send feedback, corrections, or “here’s what happened when we ran Lesson 3” stories to info@zeroday.camp. Every round of classroom feedback makes the next version more usable for the next teacher picking it up.