First Coaching Visit

This past Friday marked a big milestone for our magnet program. We have officially begin integrating computer science across the school. Through our partnership with Code to the Future, we will receive weekly coaching support. Our school’s coach, Mrs. Campbell, made her visit series of classroom visits.

We decided to start with youngest Coding Stars in kindergarten and first grade. This first week meant learning how log in and how to start writing a program. We were able to get Scratch Cat moving, talking, and some even discovered sounds. Students had time to practice, test and debug their own code as they learned to problem solve with Scratch programming.

This first week was an all hands on deck adventure, as our school administrators, our coach, classroom teacher, myself and even students pitched in to get things started.

One of the greatest challenges students faced was learning from trial and error. We had the chance to practice this skills often. Sometimes we even needed a little help from our friends. What was great was watching everyone enjoy this process.

This week only introduced a few basic commands. Students learned about event, motion and looks blocks. Because Scratch uses shapes and colors, students that are still emerging readers are still able to get involved with coding.

Our coach focused on modeling the lessons so that teachers could observe how to get started, but once the initial topics were covered it became a team operation, and even the students learned how to collaborate and communicate with each other.