Our group has been giving the aspects of ADST (ideating, making and sharing) a great deal of thought in regards to our classroom and a school wide environment. First of all, we have been thinking about our current coding practice and how simple tasks are guiding students through the ADST curricular competencies: generating ideas, making choices, creating a product, making changes, sharing what they’ve done and…
Assessing my Assessment
The kids have been working on and experimenting with coding activities for several months. They are now starting to think about applying some of their skills to specific problems or tasks. This has got me thinking about my original goal for this project, designing early literacy games for our kindergarten buddies, and also, how I can be more specific with my feedback in regards…
Diving In
It has been a crazy few weeks! I’m sure many of you can relate to the challenges of teaching, writing report cards, experimenting with FreshGrade and exploring coding activities. Let’s not forget to throw a school concert in there too! During this hectic time, my grade 3’s have been diving right in to the videos and activities at…
Follow the Rules
This week my grade 3’s continue to explore the idea of coding. We experimented with following an algorithm to colour grids and to cup stack. Both of these activities challenged the students to learn about code and the importance of utilizing the same symbols and following the same rules. Several of my students desperately wanted to be more efficient with…
Testing the Waters
Our coding project involves a grade 3 and Kindergarten class. In order to “test the waters,” we tried out some computer-less coding using numbers, arrows and small grids. First of all, we witnessed yet again how amazing kids are at communicating with other kids. Next, we realized that even the simplest of activities at this point address learning goals for…