4th grade technology activities

Conditionals with cards rebuilt so 4th graders write rules a stranger can run, five more activities by standard, a free sheet, and the CSTA standards each teaches.

  • By Skyler Carr, co-founder and CEO, Mission.io
  • Last updated

Who we are. Mission.io makes Missions: teacher-led, whole-class simulations where students use what they’re learning to work through a real scenario together.

Everything on this page works without us. The standards each one teaches are at the end, and so are the two Missions that run at 4th grade, Extraction and Cyber Defense Force. (An agent undercover on Skline needs his extraction plan in patterns the guards won’t catch.)

On this page

What 4th grade technology looks like

Fourth grade technology activities are computer science problems a class can argue about: rules that have to work for every case, programs somebody else has to run, and a part each student answers for. This page teaches four of the CSTA computer science standards for grades 3 to 5 (level 1B).

Plenty of searches for technology activities mean the lab hour: keyboarding, searching safely, being a good digital citizen. This page is the computer science side, with a phishing Mission at the end. For the lab side, Common Sense Education’s digital citizenship lessons cost nothing, CS Unplugged has more computer science with no screen, and the ISTE Standards for Students name the skills, from Digital Citizen to Computational Thinker.

Fourth grade sits in the middle of the band, and it’s where “else” lands in most sequences. Across the year, students write programs with conditionals and loops (1B-AP-10), test and debug (1B-AP-15), take on roles in a team (1B-AP-16), and organize data to make a point (1B-DA-06). The band also asks them to break problems into parts and to talk through how personal information stays protected. The codes are CSTA’s 2017 standards, the ones Code.org’s lessons cite. CSTA released new PK-12 standards in 2026.

Picture the usual version: half the class on each side, one dealer, and a red card worth a point for reasons nobody wrote down. The class played a game and kept no rules. A rule set turns into a program once it’s on paper and covers every card in the deck.

Six things that turn a card game into a program

CSTA’s computer science standards rest on seven core practices, and two of them are about the room: collaborating around computing and fostering an inclusive computing culture. Testing and refining what you build is a third (CSTA, 2017). A rule set four kids wrote and another table tried to break is the practice itself. The work is making sure each of the four can point to their part.

  1. 1. A real problem with stakes the class can feel.

    “Score a point on red” is a game. “A seven-year-old has to run this with no adult” is a problem.

  2. 2. Apply, don't recall.

    A test run by somebody who didn’t write the rules. A rule set nobody else has read hasn’t been tested.

  3. 3. Group goals with individual accountability.

    The one this game usually misses: half the class per team, and one dealer. When the group shared a goal and each student answered for a part, 84% of studies found a positive effect; without both, 17% (Slavin, 1991).

  4. 4. The teacher leads the thinking.

    Three questions at the rule card (which rule fires, what happens to a face card, who wins on all black) beat a page of if-then drills at the desk.

  5. 5. A debrief where the class argues it out.

    Playing the cards is half of it. The other half is the argument about where the gaps were and what makes rules fair, which is testing and debugging (1B-AP-15) said out loud.

  6. 6. A way to see who did what.

    The Tracer’s marked strip and the Judge’s verdict are evidence with a name on it. Without them, all you saw was a game that ended.

A computer runs the rules as written. Gaps included.

The sheet after the next section has the role cards, the rule card, the trace strip, and the tally, ready to copy. Get the sheet →

Conditionals with cards, rebuilt for 4th (1B-AP-10)

Teams play a deck of cards by written rules (if the card is red, then this team scores, else the other one does), then write rules of their own. It’s Code.org’s “Conditionals with Cards” from CS Fundamentals, which runs it in Course D for 3rd grade and in Course E for 4th. The way it usually runs is two half-class teams, one dealer, and points with no reason behind them. Here it is with all six in place.

Time
45 minutes, so it fits a period as written.
Groups
Fours. With 27 students, six groups of four and one of three, where the Tracer also judges fairness.
Supplies
7 decks of cards (dollar store, about $7), with the rule cards and score strips on the sheet. About $7.
Standards
1B-AP-10 (programs with conditionals), with 1B-AP-15 (test and debug) in round two, when another team plays your rules.

  1. Teach first, 10 minutesApply

    Flip cards from a deck and run one rule out loud: if the card is red, then clap, else stomp. Add a second rule with “else if.” Name the three words (if, then, else) and the fact that a computer checks the condition fresh on every card, with no memory of the last one. Then name the trap: a rule that’s true for every card isn’t a decision.

  2. The problemStakes

    The 4th grade is hosting a game night for the 2nd graders, and the 2nd grade teacher needs a card game with written rules a seven-year-old can run with no adult. Criteria: every rule is an if-then-else, no card is left without a rule, and both players can win. A gap leaves a seven-year-old holding a card with no instruction; an unfair set leaves one in tears. The job: a rule card that survives a test run by another team playing the 2nd graders.

  3. Four roles, one job eachAccountability

    On the sheet, and everyone signs their role’s box.

    • Rule Writer

      The only pencil on the rule card. Every rule goes in if-then-else form.

    • Dealer

      Runs the test: flips the cards and reads only the written rules, never improvising.

    • Tracer

      Before the test, walks ten cards through the rules on paper and marks any card with no rule.

    • Fairness Judge

      Keeps score during the test and reports whether one side can win without luck on its side.

  4. You lead the thinkingTeacher leads

    Three questions, asked at the rule card: Which rule fires for this card, and is there exactly one? What happens to a face card under your rules? Who wins if every card is black? Then step back and leave the gaps for the Tracer to find.

  5. Two rounds, so the rules meet a strangerApply

    Round one: write, trace, and test the rule set. Round two: swap rule cards with another team, which plays yours as 2nd graders and reports every gap and every unfair spot. Then the team fixes its card from that report (1B-AP-15). A rule card only its writer can run isn’t finished.

  6. The debrief, 10 minutesDebrief

    Two rule cards under the document camera. Which rule sets had a gap, and which card found it? What makes a rule set fair, said in if-then-else words? Who in your group traced a card and found the gap before the test? Fourth graders will name the Tracer who caught the jack.

  7. See who did whatSee who did what

    The observation sheet, four behaviors per student: wrote a correct if-then-else rule, found a gap or a bug, explained a fairness problem with a reason, changed a rule with a reason. The test phase runs loud, so tally during tracing; one period catches about half the room.

(If a team’s rules skip the face cards, leave the face cards in the deck. Finding that gap is the Tracer’s job.)

Keep the fixed rule cards. A 2nd grade class that plays one is the best test report there is.

The conditionals card game, free

Emailed now, ready to copy: the teacher page, four role cards, the rule card with five if-then-else frames, the ten-card trace strip with the score strip, the test report for gaps and the fairness verdict, and the four-behavior tally.

It’s on its way.

Check your inbox for the conditionals card game.

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Five more 4th grade technology activities, by standard

Five more that turn up on 4th grade lists: what each one is, how it usually runs, and what it’s missing, from online safety through data to programming.

Safety, data, programming

2. Password Power-Up (1B-NI-05)

Needs [Common Sense Education's free lesson](https://www.commonsense.org/education/digital-citizenship/lesson/password-power-up) and a password checklist. Small groups.

In Common Sense Education’s Password Power-Up, students build passwords and test them against a checklist: long, mixed characters, not a dictionary word, nothing personal. 4th graders have usually seen it, so it works as a quick review. As usually run, though, the checklist is a quiz, because nobody ever tries to crack a password.

The fix

  1. Run it before Cyber Defense Force, which asks the same question of emails and links.
  2. Give each group a made-up profile card (a pet, a favorite team, a birthday), and let another group’s Guesser take three guesses at its password.
  3. Have each group fix whatever the guesses gave away.

See Password Power-Up on the 3rd grade page →

3. The class survey spreadsheet (1B-DA-06)

Needs one class question and a spreadsheet on the projector. Whole class.

The class asks itself a question, like the best lunch day, collects the answers, and charts them in a spreadsheet on the projector. The charting is real, and the class cares about the answer. As usually run, though, one person types while everyone else watches, so nothing shows who could read the chart.

The fix

  1. Split the class into small groups, each collecting its own slice of the answers, and give one child per group the job of entering that slice.
  2. Have a second child in each group check the entries against the tally before the chart is made.
  3. Ask each group one question the chart answers, and note who explains it.

No page for this one. Those two misses are what to fix.

4. Graph paper programming (1B-AP-10)

Needs graph paper, a simple picture, pencils. Pairs.

Students write a simple picture as a string of arrow and fill commands, then hand the string to someone else to draw. The programming is real, and the hand-off is a real test. As usually run, though, it’s a worksheet with a loose hand-off, and nothing shows who wrote the program and who fixed it.

The fix

  1. Pair students as a Programmer, who writes the string without showing the picture, and a Drawer.
  2. The Drawer follows the string exactly, one command at a time, while the Programmer stays silent.
  3. Compare the drawing with the picture, fix the first command that went wrong, and swap jobs.

The fix is two roles, so it needs no page.

5. A Scratch maze game (1B-AP-10)

Needs a device per pair and a free Scratch account. Pairs.

Students build a simple maze game in Scratch: draw the walls, then program a sprite that moves with the arrow keys and bounces back when it touches a wall. Sequences, events, and if-then checks all get used. As usually run, though, each student builds alone at a screen, and nobody talks about what broke.

The fix

  1. Pair students, and have each pair draw the maze and list the sprite’s rules on paper before anyone opens Scratch.
  2. At the keyboard, one partner types while the other reads the plan, and they swap every ten minutes.
  3. End with two pairs showing the bug that took longest to fix.

No page needed; the paper plan and the ten-minute swap do the work.

6. Cup-stacking robots (1B-AP-11)

Needs plastic cups and a six-symbol key. Teams.

In Code.org’s My Robotic Friends, a team writes a program in six symbols (pick up a cup, put it down, step forward, step back, turn left, turn right) and a teammate runs it, cup by cup, to build a stack. Code.org publishes the grade 4 Course E version aligned to 1B-AP-11, and in 4th grade it runs well as that lesson. As usually run, though, several programmers talk at once over one robot, and nobody has to read a program they didn’t write.

The fix

  1. Give each teammate one job: a Programmer on the symbol strip, a Robot who runs it exactly, and an Auditor who counts the symbols and checks the stack against the picture.
  2. Swap programs with another team building the same stack, and run theirs with your own Robot.

See the cup robots on the 5th grade page →

  • Our part · We make Missions

    Then the unit has somewhere to go

    Plenty of teachers rebuild these by hand every unit, and it works. A Mission is a teacher-led, whole-class simulation built from a unit you teach. No Mission teaches programming at this grade. When the science unit turns to sending information in patterns, run the graph paper programs, then Extraction.

    You're at the helm, not on the hook.

    Extraction: messages in code, as a Mission

    Extraction · Grade 4 · About 35 minutes · One device per student, plus your projector · Free with a teacher account

    Upper-elementary students work at rows of Chromebooks while a teacher in a black cardigan leans down to two boys sharing a table, and a dark Mission screen glows on the wall behind them.
    A teacher stooping to one table while the rest of the room works on its screens.

    Cobalt and Leon are undercover on Skline, looking into a new scrap metal operation, and suspicion of Cobalt is growing. The crew has to get an extraction plan to him without Scorpio’s surveillance guards catching it, so they design a way to send the details in patterns, then encode and decode the messages from Mission Command. The story plays on the projector. The work happens at seven stations (Command, Engineering, Medical, Security, Science, I.T., Operations) and in the arguments between them.

    Every student is assigned to a team, and each team’s work is themed to it, from its own information and challenge to the same problem the rest of the crew is solving. The team gives a student a role in the story and people to lean on while you move between teams. You’re at the helm, asking which pattern the guards would notice first.

    The vocabulary is the unit’s: encode, decode, convert, data, wave, cipher. Extraction is a science Mission. It lists NGSS 4-PS4-3, a science standard on using patterns to send information, with Common Core reading, writing, and speaking codes. Run the graph paper programs first, where a picture travels as a string of arrows, and tell the class why: Cobalt’s message has to travel as a pattern, too. The lesson prepares them. The Mission is what they’re preparing for.

    “Unlike other tech programs in the district that often have students working in isolation or in pairs, Mission.io emphasizes true collaboration.”

    Lorilee Johnson, District specialist, Alpine School District, UT

    Will it work in my room?

    Students join with a class code: no student accounts, no student email, no passwords. Chromebooks, laptops, or tablets, plus your projector. Free for teachers, no credit card. Student data is covered by COPPA and FERPA, and we signed the Student Privacy Pledge. At about 35 minutes, Extraction fits a 45-minute period with time left for the debrief.

    START FREE →

    Communication first, then Extraction

    What the report shows

    A Mission.io class report: the class score in each of six skills, from knowledge and application to collaboration, critical thinking, and resilience, with the class chart across the year below.
    A class report from a real Mission: the class score in each of six skills, then each skill across the year.

    Every Mission produces a report for every student, built from what that student did across the whole Mission, on the skills the Mission captured. The six it can capture are Knowledge, Application, Initiative, Collaboration, Critical Thinking, and Resilience. The first two are what a test already sees. The other four are the human skills every school promises. The test shows what they know. The report shows the rest. SEE THE EVIDENCE →

    You taught it. Now find out who can use it.

    Who's behind it

    Mission.io is a research and design organization with one job: make collaborative, active learning something a teacher can run every unit instead of once a semester, and put a report in your hands when it’s over. Over a million students have run a Mission. The research behind them is funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, and Mission.io meets ESSA Level II standards, as validated by Instructure.

    Grades 3 to 5 CSTA standards this page teaches

    This page’s activities teach four of the 21 CSTA computer science standards for grades 3 to 5. Each code links to CSTA’s table of the 2017 standards.

    The four standards this page teaches

    Data, conditionals, debugging, and team roles.

    The grades 3 to 5 CSTA standards this page teaches at 4th grade, with the activity for each.
    The standardOn this page
    1B-DA-06 Organize and present collected data visually to highlight relationships and support a claim.On this page: 3. The class survey spreadsheet
    1B-AP-10 Create programs that include sequences, events, loops, and conditionals.On this page: 1. Conditionals with cards, 4. Graph paper programming, and 5. The Scratch maze
    1B-AP-15 Test and debug (identify and fix errors) a program or algorithm to ensure it runs as intended.On this page: 1. Conditionals with cards, round two
    1B-AP-16 Take on varying roles, with teacher guidance, when collaborating with peers during the design, implementation, and review stages of program development.On this page: 1. The rule card’s four roles

    The Missions for this grade

    Extraction is a science Mission on sending information in patterns, and Cyber Defense Force is on phishing. None lists a CSTA code.

    The two Missions that run at 4th grade, with the codes each one lists.
    NumberMissionTopic (code)Minutes
    7ExtractionDesign a way to use patterns to get an extraction plan to Cobalt (NGSS 4-PS4-3, with Common Core ELA codes)35
    8Cyber Defense ForceUse the S.T.O.P. method to sort safe messages from threats during a firewall update37
    START FREEMISSION BRIEF →

    Free teacher account, no card. Start with the Communication Mission, marked Start here in your library, then Extraction or Cyber Defense Force, each after its 5-minute Teacher Preview.

    Also at this grade

    The 4th grade STEM activities page rebuilds the parachute drop and lists the grade’s Missions in every subject; the 4th grade science activities page maps Extraction with the grade’s other science Missions; the 4th grade engineering activities and 4th grade math activities pages map those subjects’ standards; and the 3rd grade technology activities page rebuilds Password Power-Up, while the 5th grade technology activities page rebuilds the cup robots.

Questions 4th grade technology teachers ask

Which 4th grade computer science standards does this page teach?

Four of the CSTA standards for grades 3 to 5 (level 1B), each with its activity: 1B-DA-06 data, 1B-AP-10 conditionals, 1B-AP-15 debugging, and 1B-AP-16 team roles. They’re CSTA’s 2017 codes, the ones Code.org’s lessons cite.

What technology skills should a 4th grader have?

Writing if-then-else rules that cover every card in the deck is the big one at 4th grade, and this page adds testing and fixing a program someone else wrote, working in a team role, and turning survey answers into a chart that makes a point. Those four come from CSTA’s computer science standards. ISTE’s Standards for Students list seven broader skills: Empowered Learner, Digital Citizen, Knowledge Constructor, Innovative Designer, Computational Thinker, Creative Communicator, and Global Collaborator. Common Sense Education has free digital citizenship lessons, and CS Unplugged has more computer science away from the screen.

Is there a 4th grade Mission for coding?

No. Two Missions run at 4th grade, and neither teaches programming: Extraction is a science Mission on sending messages in patterns, and Cyber Defense Force is on spotting phishing, from 4th grade through 12th. The card game, the graph paper, and Scratch carry the programming standards.

How do I grade 4th graders on a rule set they wrote together?

Grade the card and the behaviors, not the score. The trace strip and the test report are one grade: did the rules cover every card, and did the team fix what the other team found? The four-behavior tally across two or three activities is the other. A team that lost the game and fixed three gaps did the standard.

Which standards do the 4th grade Missions list?

Extraction lists NGSS 4-PS4-3, a science standard, with Common Core reading, writing, and speaking codes and 18 state science sets. Cyber Defense Force lists Florida’s Next Generation Sunshine State Standards. Neither lists a CSTA or ISTE code.

No card left without a rule

Day one, conditionals with cards and the sheet. When the science unit turns to sending information in patterns, the graph paper programs, then Extraction after a 5-minute Teacher Preview. Both free.

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