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Welcome to Beyond the Hour of Code, I am your host
Dr. Sam Patterson, makerspace teacher and author of Programming in the Primary Grades, Beyond the Hour of Code.
Not everyone is super excited about coding, especially teachers. My love is learning, self-directed, creative, expressive learning. Code and things you can code are just one of the many tools I use in my space. (I have not yet written the beyond material for sewing and puppets, it is coming)- So what I want to chat about today, the conversation I want to start is about what code is doing in our classes, and how we, as teachers, can respond to the public pressure to code in a way that serves our highest pedagogical goals.
I talk about those a bunch my \u201cHighest Pedagogical Goals\u201d These are big picture goals like \u201cTeach kids to read\u201d \u201chelp kids develop the social skills to treat each other with kindness\u201d The simple fact is that unless you are teaching a computer science class, you won\u2019t be teaching your kids to code so that they can learn about coding. Also- You will have to teach some of your kids to code.
My school is an award winner in tech integration, and my students complain that I don\u2019t teach them enough code before asking them to do things with it. This is true. I give direct instruction and practice short shrift and I rush to building something that does something for someone. I interrupt them as they work to show them specific things and as they learn things I didn\u2019t know I have them teach the class. This isn\u2019t comfortable for most of us.
Have you seen the drawing of a person with a circle around them labeled \u201ccomfort zone\u201d and the\xa0\xa0X far outside the circle that says \u201cYou Are Here?\u201d This is the land of coding in elementary school. While some of the kids and some of the teachers enjoy the challenge of logic puzzles and the rewards built into them, for many teacher and students the coding games and tutorials we find have little relationship to the world beyond the screen. They feel disconnected, and generic, and cutesy, like a worksheet.
What I strive for instead is a learning experience that takes a simple concept and uses the code platform to play with the concept and connect with other learning we have been doing. Sometimes this might be a ScratchJr \u201ccode the aquarium\u201d challenge to have the kids learn loops and apply what they have been learning about fish. Other times we might use a hummingbird robotics kit to recreate a scene from the Berenstain Bears classic\xa0\xa0\u201cThe Spooky Old Tree."
Instead of relying on the leveled app or challenge to engage the kids, I build my own frame. I create a lousy sample program.* (Always make a minimum, or don\u2019t show them your fancy work,\xa0\xa0I find that \u201cI could do better than that\u201d is a really productive mindset for kids, especially when compared to \u201cI could never do anything that cool\u201d) I show the kids the lousy sample and leave the code where they can get it to copy, modify, remix, etc.
I do this because I want the kids in my class to spend the time in my class to do things that are specific to my class. I don\u2019t want kids sitting in an app they could do anywhere clicking through screens, that is just giving my time away to an app builder in hopes that their app meets my learning goals. Often the only goal this meets is the external demand for coding.
When our schools and communities call for \u201ccoding for all\u201d or \u201ccoding in every classroom,\u201d our job as teachers is to make sure that coding, like every other tool that enters our classroom, serves the highest goals we have for our students during the time we share.
I find that focusing on the job the coding is doing (to show, to explain, to model, to storytelling, to control something) more than the code itself \u2013 keeps my kids focused on the higher goals. This allows them access to success even if there is something not yet working with the programming. If you only define success by who makes it to level...