Hi Jennie,

Thank you for your feedback. We have deliberate, key CS concepts integrated at each grade level. The 3rd grade progress through the concepts in course 2 of Code Studio, CS Fundamentals; 4th grade and 5th grade progress through course 3 and a bit of course 4. CS concepts are introduced on a "need to know" basis as to keep with the integrated approach. For example, the concept of an EVENT is essential when developing an interactive artifact - part of the culminating CS project for all three grade levels.

This is an interesting question. Do schools participate in your project as an entire school? Or do teachers sign up to participate as individual teachers. A coherent system of 3rd grade CS, followed by 4th grade CS, followed by 5th grade CS is surely optimal, but that would require whole-school buy-in.

We were definitely working with a whole-school buy-in formula. It has become a school culture.

 

We selected 8 schools to participate as our "treatment" schools and all of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade classes at each school participated in the project. Our schools are very diverse in their student demographics and exists in very different areas of our district (we're the 6th largest in the nation).

 

We trained the teams as grade level units during professional development that focused on each of the specific modules - two modules per grade level - and all teachers were given access to all module materials for all grade levels. One member of each grade level for each school was selected to act as designee and communicate with the other grade levels at their school so they were aware of the curriculum and help plan integration. having all teachers on a grade level participate allowed them to plan together and share ideas for integration of CS. It allowed them to feel more confident that if they struggled with any of the new CS concepts, there was someone they could turn to for support and clarification.

 

The administration at each school was very supportive of the curriculum and CS integration. They assigned a school designee to facilitate communication between the school and our team. The literacy coaches attended the same professional development and were formed into a supportive cohort that could share information between schools and support ELA integration through science and social studies. Finally, we invited "specials" teachers (art, media, science, etc.) to attend professional development and contribute to the integration of the curriculum beyond the main classroom. All members of these teams were given access to curriculum, as well, to facilitate a common language and support.

This level of systemic buy-in sounds great. You write as if the initiative is over. Has the project come to an end? Are the schools still implementing?

Schools are still implementing the 2nd module - we end here June 8, so a few more weeks of implementation. Then on to data analysis!

Good luck!

Thank you! It has been wonderful working with the 117 3rd - 5th grade teachers and their students (about 2,300 in total) from such soci-economically diverse backgrounds. We are impressed by the student engagement and the support of the teachers and administrators for CS integration.

Hi Kip,

We are the district in the Research-Practice Partnership with Outlier as the research partner. All data is anonymized before we share for data analysis. Same is true with our partnership with Code.org. We, at the district, are the project leads and the "keepers of the data" and everything is run through our IRB (in addition to the IRB at UChicago) with deliberate attention to student privacy.