Coding with Little Learners

Welcome back to school! As part of an introspective community that is constantly welcoming iterations shaping how we teach and impact student's lives, I am thrilled to be launching a coding program for our littlest learners this year. Rather than translate into more screen time, this program will focus on coding as a literacy, rather than a technical skill. Having been inspired by Ann Gadzikowski's research as well as the book Coding as a Playground: Programming and Computational Thinking in the Early Childhood Classsroom by Marina Umaschi Bers, our young students have the opportunity to reinforce skills that they are learning in the core curriculum through coding: sequencing and algorithmic thinking. Our first lesson this week involved creating the understanding that robots aren't human but are rather programmed to think like a human. It can be equated to training a dog. We teach (or program) a dog to learn new tricks, similar to teaching (or programming a robot) to perform as a human. We also weave in feelings and emotions through these lessons. Even though robots aren't human, do we still care about them? Even though machines aren't real people, do we still care for and take care of them? Absolutely. We are learning to understand the world around us and translate that to better understand our relationships with objects and other humans. 

Problem-solving and learning to be comfortable not having all of the answers is a key component to coding as a playground. We don't have a playbook for playing on the playground. We decide to explore objects on the playground by trial and error. We are also social creatures. Rather than playing silently on the playground, we connect, collaborate, and discover together. The approach to coding with little ones is similar. Working in small groups, we learn to solve problems together by sharing ideas, trying out potential solutions, and reworking our attempts to move forward. 

To help us in these efforts, we have acquired some new technology. Some of these tools include the Cubetto, Beebots, and Osmo. Integrating these tools into the lessons to reinforce the concepts allows the students to engineer their own learning. As we learn more about the world around us within the framework of coding, we will ultimately produce our own unique projects using the design process shared below. Learners can approach this design process by jumping in at any phase of the project and working from there. It is a flexible learning experience. 

Working in groups of four to five students, on our second day of school, we walk through Cubetto's world on his second day. We explore the environment around us, learning how to get from point A to point B, just like we are learning to do this first week. 

Students orienting Cubetto to help the robot get where it needs to go

Students gain confidence through trial and error

 Students celebrate their success!

This week, learning with Cubetto taught us to persevere, have grit, be creative, and to have fun. Our students can't wait to see what (or who) will be waiting for them next week. We look forward to learning right along their side.