Computer Science Unplugged and Plugged

This year in the STEM lab for my Kindergarten-2nd grade students kicked off, as usual, with a round of computer science with Code.org. These computer science lessons are self paced and include a variety of "unplugged" activities that allow students to practice programming skills without a device. Code.org employs a block-based programming language called Blockly, which is based on Javascript to allow young students, even beginning readers, to program the computer. The courses present students with a series of puzzles that ask them to give directions to a character that guide that character through a maze.

The Code.org courses are wonderfully leveled, so as students move from from one grade to the next, the course is correspondingly more challenging. The step up from first grade to second is particularly tall. Kindergarten and first grade program using blocks labelled with the cardinal directions. Changing the direction of the character's movement only requires the use of a block with a new direction. That is, the direction to move and to turn are one command. For second grade, "move" and "turn" become separate instructions.

In addition to the Code.org programming puzzles, students also got some time to work in the programming language Scratch Jr. Code.org provides structured practice, in the form of puzzles, for students to develop coding skills. Scratch Jr. is an open-ended coding environment in which students can create whatever it is they imagine.

Another important part of the Kindergarten - second grade program in the lab is creative building time. I set aside most Fridays in the lab for "Free Build Friday". This is a time for students to build with their hands, rather than a computer, and without any assigned task in mind. Legos are a standard component of Free Build Friday. A current favorite is the KEVA planks Contraptions kit. Students spend so much time working on tasks with set directions and one right answer (not in my room of course) that I think it is essential that they get the chance to just play.

Biography Bottles

By the time students get to the 5th grade, their projects have both physical and digital elements. That is, their final products include some computer programming and something they made with their hands using generous amounts of glue and/or tape. Another consistent element of the 5th grade projects is that the students are creating something that shares their knowledge, thoughts, ideas, and understandings on a selected topic. I select a broad category and the students select a topic from that category to be the subject of their research.

The first unit this year is biographies of notable women (mostly women anyway) from STEM related fields. I selected 6 subjects for each of the 4 groups of 5th graders to choose from. There was some overlap from group to group, but always some variation as well. Ideally each group would have had an entirely different set of people to choose from, but I was limited by what is available on the digital research tools available to the students. The problem with trying to introduce students to lesser known (but no less important) women and people of color in STEM is that there are not as many resources for them to use to gather information.

Students had some time to research their choices because there were always a few who they had never heard of. They selected a person they were interested in studying and set about gathering more information on that person's life and work. The students were also able to decide if they wanted to work with a partner or go it alone.

(The project in the video above is one of many excellent final programs. This one is about Rachel Carson, see the whole project on Scratch: here.)

The final product had two parts. The first was to create a Scratch project that told about the life of their selected topic. Students had to include an image of their person, basic biographical data, information about their education, and the significance of their work. The second part of the project was to use a plastic bottle, cardboard, construction paper, and various other crafting supplies to build a model of the person they researched. They were to try make their model look as much as possible like the person they studied. It is no mean feat to turn a plastic bottle and construction paper into recognizable portrait of Ada Lovelace or Grace Hopper, but I am always impressed by how well the students manage this challenge.

As students progress through the lab over the course of their elementary careers, it is my goal to train them to see every material that I put before them, be it a cereal box or a computer as a tool for sharing their ideas, expressing their thoughts, and building personally meaningful projects. I give students as much choice as I am able to without overwhelming them. By giving them choices and providing an array of flexible materials, though they are working on a similar task, there is a wondrous variety in the final products. The studio where the students are sharing their Scratch projects is linked below.

Scratch Biographies Studio

This project is based on an project by K. Boyce, instructions can be found on Instructables.

Programming Art

I have wanted to do a unit focused on programming and the arts for a while now, and the redesign of Scratch unveiled earlier this year gave me the perfect opportunity. Since this is the first rotation of the year, we started with a day of exploration in Scratch as many students have not used the platform since last school year. While students reacquainted themselves with Scratch, I made sure that everyone had their login information in their journals.

Over the next two days, students used two different tutorials that I designed to introduce them to the Pen and Music extensions in Scratch. If you would like to look them over, here they are: Pen and Music. These begin with how to add the extension blocks and an overview of how they work. There are a few starter scripts followed by suggestions for tinkering with the code. Each tutorial ends with a couple of reflection questions which students respond to in their journals. It was wonderful to hear the students' excitement as they discovered new visual and sonic effects during their explorations.

An important element of the Scratch online community it the ability for students to "remix" projects created by others. They are able to, in effect, look under the hood of a program and take it apart to see how it works. They can experiment with making changes to the code and determine the effects of those changes. I directed the students to a Scratch studio (link below) called "Interactive Music and Drawing" and specifically to a pair of projects that I created using the two extensions. They were instructed to try both projects, then to choose one to remix. I loved seeing the creative variations students created. Some students invented new rhythms, others added more characters that draw different shapes or patterns. I may be projecting a little bit, but I feel like this group's willingness to go their own directions and to follow their own interests is a consequence of having started visiting the lab in kindergarten. That's 4 years of being instilled with the idea that in this space their creativity is encouraged, valued, and celebrated.

The final project for this unit was a challenge to create an original Scratch project (as opposed to a remix) that uses both the pen and the music extensions. The only additional parameters were that they needed to include several key press events that allow the user to control some elements of the program. This could be changing the tempo or the instrument playing. It could be changing the color of the pen or the direction of the sprites. Students with a more musical bent were free to follow that interest, while the visual artists went that way. I encouraged them to return to the tutorials if they needed inspiration or to be reminded of how to create a certain effect. Some students chose to work with a partner and some worked independently. I have been impressed with how well the teams have divided the labor between themselves.

After a few days to work, students shared their projects and added them to the studio. They reflected in their journals on their work thinking about what they are proudest of, and what they think they could improve. Finally, students explored the studio trying each other's projects as well as projects created by students from the classes who have already been through the lab this grading cycle. This gave them the chance to see the ideas of others and to practice good digital citizenship skills by leaving helpful comments for each other.

Here is the link to the studio where students have been sharing their artistic wonders. The last rotation ends the 3rd week of October, so more projects will be added as new classes complete their work. Check back to see what they have made!