District Administration: 5 Reasons We Should Add Coding as Another Language in ELA
In this District Administraton article, Jason Innes, KinderLab Robotics’ director of curriculum, training, and product management describes 5 reasons coding can engage students in reading and writing to help reinforce literacy concepts.
The article reads in part:
Coding is so much more than technical problem-solving or a career pathway. It’s a creative process that, just like language, allows practitioners to explore new ways of thinking and expressing themselves.
As Marina Bers, a pioneer in children’s technology education, has observed: Teachers don’t need to turn every child into a programmer any more than they need to turn every child into a novelist. Rather, they should teach children to code for the same reasons they teach them to write: it gives them fluency in a new kind of expression.
Students are ready to begin learning about coding at the same time they are ready to begin learning to read and write any other language—including the natural languages they’ve been learning to speak their whole lives. In fact, literacy and coding can be taught side-by-side to reinforce concepts such as grammar and syntax, representation, and eventually, expression across both disciplines.
These 5 reasons are:
1 – Coding connects students
2 – Drawing out reluctant speakers
3 – How sequencing is key to both robotics and storytelling
4 – Robotics as storytelling
5 – Design process parallels the writing process
Read on for the full article.
