Coding for Your Classroom 4 – 10

What you will learn

• What is Computational Thinking
• Places we see and use computational thinking in our everyday lives.
• Curriculum Connections
• Diversity in Computer Science
• Identify cross curricular connections between computer science and other subject matter.
• Become familiar with computational thinking through interactive lessons and activities.
• Individually develop personal digital literacy
• become more comfortable and confident individually in computational thinking.
• Be able to inspire computational thinking in learners through collaborative and stimulating hands-on activities.
• Incorporating general strategies for evaluating computational thinking activities.
• Understanding that technology drives just about everything that defines modern society as we know it.
• Learn some coding activities (both plugged & unplugged) for your 4-9 class
• Constraints in teaching coding.
• How to implement all these in the classroom

Program Overview

Could we create an opponent that will always beat us in rock paper scissors? How could we educate youth about the climate crisis through a video game? Can a story be interactive?

These are some of the questions that will guide your learning experience in Coding For Your Classroom 4-9!

This course is designed for educators to learn about ways to teach computational thinking logic to their students through fun, hands-on activities. The goal is for teachers to feel more confident with coding concepts and activities and to be able to create their own. This course will explore what computational thinking is and why it is important to teach it and introduce it to students at a young age, so we have more diversity in our technology fields in the future. Educators will leave this course knowing that they will be able to incorporate coding and develop students? digital literacy through minor changes in their classrooms. Additionally, we aim to break barriers that teachers may face in their classrooms by providing participants with resources that develop these skills without the use of technology. At the end of the course, you will be provided with enough resources to begin to bring coding into your classroom start to feel confident creating your own!

Teachers will explore a variety of web-based platforms throughout the course such as: Microsoft MakeCode Micro:bit, Scratch, Twinery, and more!