Learning through Programming
Mitch Resnick, the researcher who developed Scratch, describes programming as a medium of learning and comprehension building. When students are asked to program fish to swim in a coral reef they are going to ask how a starfish swims. They will wonder if a whale belongs in the reef. They will ask the other student in their table group what color they should make the seahorse. Students will get the books off the shelf and look up the images and stories the class has shared in order to make an accurate model. Programming this challenge instead of making a poster allows the students to move past the simple question of “what is it” to more advanced questions like “What does it do?” and “How does it relate to the rest of the environment.”
Programming is a vehicle that allows teachers to help students develop a more complete understanding of any subject. At it’s most integrated, programming becomes just another way we have students process information. In the youngest grades, programming slows them down enough to enforce procedural thinking.
About Programming in the Primary Grades, Beyond the Hour of Code
This book will explain all of the platforms available and help teachers develop their own sequence of activities and skills that move students from leveled apps into content area lessons in open studio apps. By the end of this book, teachers should have a good understanding of several basic types of programming-based content area lessons and their own list of ready-to-roll lessons to support learning.
The multi-grade focus of the text is designed to help teachers see how programming skills build year over year. It can also help teachers develop an understanding for how programming skills are applied to content area learning and how that changes from one year of instruction to the next.
Just like math, reading, and writing, once teachers see how this knowledge and practice builds over years, they can release themselves of the responsibility of teaching “all” of programming.