Teachers: You Can Use Code To Teach
With many coding camps and sites popping up, we recognize an increasing desire to learn and teach coding. Our years of research reveal an increasing demand for coders. But, we also see the lack of educational equity that often denies even inner city students access to coding. You can do something about this. You can be part of the generation of teachers that inspire your students to pursue coding as a hobby, career, or even a way of sustaining their families.
Instead of just hosting coding camps and hack-a-thons, we want to make the case that teachers can implement coding in their instruction. Even when coding are used as illustrations to convey multiplication concepts, students in K-12 schools can benefit from exposure to code. Just seeing the code can spark curiosity among your student. Still, showing how modular division used inside a Python code can help fourth grade students understand division properties and be the catalyst for a self-motivated pursuit of learning to code.
You do NOT need to know how to code in order to do this. You just need to spark curiosity through exposure to code and show relevance (and, of course, teach the standard). When we train teachers to do this, they become familiar with the code that is needed for particular lessons and then are able to use the code in their instruction. That way, you do not need to be an expert at all of the lines of code nor do you need to know even most of the basics of Scratch or Java in order to get the message across.
You also do not need an onsite computer science department to do this. Do you have a projector and a computer? If so, you can show them code. You can even show an animation and show the code that made it to show the trajectory of an object in space. When you lesson plan, you include this in the lesson as you would show a video. You simply need to know how the code applies to the lesson you created so that the lesson communicates the standard well and the students understand.
How can we help?
We are your computer science team. We also teach in classrooms, so we have also created lesson and pacing plans. We will provide the code that aligns with your lesson plan, explain the code relates to your lesson, share teaching strategies, and follow up with you concerning your lesson. This becomes how you introduce your students to coding and help us fill the equity gap. As your students connect to the lesson, you can use the code for either a few lessons or many more, it is your choice.
How do we get started?
Send us a note (see below), email us (info@gladacademics.com), call or text us (310-893-5551), and we will begin. A lesson will cost between $5-$25, depending on what you want. Once we work together, you should find that we work well together!
