OUR STORY: CODING INQUIRY PROJECTGRADE 3/4 NUSDEH YOH

PLACE

• Nusdeh Yoh is an Aboriginal choice school for grades K-7 located downtown

Prince George on the traditional territory of the Lheidli T'enneh territory, the

place where the rivers meet. As an Aboriginal choice school our learning is

based in Aboriginal pedagogy which focusses on the land and its teachings.

Our school wants our student’s to have a strong connection to the environment

and community. Becoming leaders who honour and care for our community

and the future.

PEOPLE

• Team members: Marianne Brown, Noelle Pepin, Katie Marren, Leona Prince

• Grade 3/4 students

• Co-Teach Coding lessons once a week

• SET-BC provided 11 laptops in November 2016

PARTICIPANTS

• Grade 3/4 students

• Classroom Teacher

• ELL Maker Teacher

• District Resource Teacher

Conditions for Learning

Differentiation/UDL

• Vice-Principal

Stretches

Groupwork

Math CultureCoding

background

LiteracyStrengths

Group Dynamics

Hands on learning

ArtCommunication

Skills

SET BC INQUIRY QUESTIONS:

• Can coding be used as a vehicle to teach applied design to all students in a

diverse classroom? Yes

• Will the student’s involved in individual or group projects increase oral

language and collaboration skills over the year? Yes, coding and Makerspace

times has given them specific vocabulary as well as some collaboration skills.

• How can we as teachers/students explore Aboriginal culture and teachings with

coding and making? The students and teachers explored coding through

beading and also during their makerspace time which incorporated ADST

curriculum.

JOURNEY

ScratchCode.orgTactile

LessonsPaper Lessons

MAKERSPACE:

• Follow on twitter: @INDIGital_space

• Whole school Maker program

• Building a Maker culture in our school.

• 3 Maker teachers go into intermediate classes (2 Maker teachers in primary classes)for

1hour while classroom teacher does assessment.

• Planning for maker projects revolves around the learning objectives that we set out based

around student needs and interest.

• Makerspace supports literacy intervention by providing time for teachers to complete

assessments.

• ELL objectives are completed through maker processes (team work, discussions around

projects, communicating needs to each other and teachers).

STUDENTGoals Progress

Become active participant’s in their

learning

Student’s are more vocal about what they

need and practicing “troubleshooting” the

problem before asking for help from an

adult

Students are asking other students for help.

Increase oral language The student’s are using specific vocabulary

linked to coding, for example “debugging”.

Increase collaboration skills One student asked in relation to makerspace

“When are we going to work together

again, in groups?”

TEACHERGoal Progress

Increase digital

literacy

Marianne: Attended BC Tech Summit (2017)

Learning scratch along with the students

Noelle

Presented District Pro-D: Coding without a computer, Integrating

Maker Culture in your school, Implementing Maker Culture in your

school.

Interviewed for Learn BC (March 2017) Code-ifying the

curriculum

Masters Project: Beaded Tweets: Bringing the Digital into the

physical

Future Presentations:

PAS Superconference (Vancouver, Oct 2017)

Indspire National Gathering (Montreal,Nov 2017)

Goal Progress

Integrate

Aboriginal

Culture

Marianne: Drumming with Class, Seasonal observations of

the environment.

Leona and Noelle

Inspire Webinars:

Incorporating Maker Education into your Classroom with an

Indigenous Worldview

Indigenous Maker Culture and Place-Based Learning

Joined the Successful Practices Committee for Inspire

START UP/INSPIRATION

• Art based

• Graph Paper

• Minecraft

• Video games

• Focus on: Algorithm? Proofreading? Debugging?

START-UP MATERIALS

The different grid size allowed for

Differentiation.

Students could challenge

themselves with smaller squares or

use the larger squares to get

accustomed to the task.

PI CITYSCAPE

• Pi Cityscape: It can be Pi in the sky- a cityscape picture made from the digits

of Pi

HALLOWEEN CODE

GRAPH PAPER START-UP

• The graph paper activities provided an opportunity to see where students

were at or most comfortable

• Translation of images to number and vice versa

• Curriculum connections to graphing in mathematics, language arts

following/giving directions

• Students were also given the chance to self-assess, we did not prescribe size

of graph paper to students we allowed for choice.

DESIGN A PATH

Algorithm: a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving

operations, especially by a computer.

PIXEL ART

CODE/BEAD YOUR NAME WITH PONY BEADS

BEADING OUR NAMES IN CODE

• Introduction to ASCII code: students used the ASCII to encode their names using pony

beads. Each letter of the alphabet can be represented in ASCII as an eight-digit

combination of 0s and 1s. Students chose two colours of beads to represent the 0s

and 1s and then used tables to translate their names into ASCII code on beaded

necklaces or bracelets.

• It’s visual, hands on learning; making a very abstract concept tangible

• The lesson extended into discussions about translation, proofreading and debugging,

as well as cross-curricular connections to culture, identity, mathematics and literacy.

• Gordon Li was a visitor in our classroom that day

VISIT FROM GORDON LI

• “The students were

creating something

they connected with

on an immediate level

while learning the

very foundations of

coding.”

- Gordon Li, Learn

(March 2017)

https://www.bcteacherregulation.ca/documents/Learn/LearnMagazine

_Current.pdf#page=4

HANDS ON/PHYSICAL LEARNING

CODE.ORG

Several students have moved

onto to course 2 before

becoming engrossed in Scratch.

SCRATCH

BENEFITS OF STARTING WITHOUT A COMPUTER

• They can relate computational thinking beyond the computer if start with

paper or other tangible ways of coding

• Provides access points for all students

• Connect to their experiences

• Realizing that coding can be done without a computer which is very important

to our students because they have limited access to technology.

REFLECTION

“This has been an amazing experience. I’m glad we applied for and received this

grant. My students surprised me in their ability to quickly adapt to coding language

and how fast they picked up Scratch. They loved to create images and ‘cartoons’ on

Scratch, but in reality in the end – they enjoyed all the different aspects of this

project. As a classroom teacher, I will definitely teach this again (with less

trepidation).”

Marianne Brown

Nusdeh Yoh Grade 3/4 Teacher

REFLECTION

“It was a wonderful learning experience for both myself and the students. The progress I’ve

seen in the grade 3/4’s in both coding and makerspace is phenomenal. Student’s have gone

from not being able to piece of paper to asking to be in groups. This project has made me

more focused on how we can express culture through modern technology or vice versa;

viewing social media networks/Coding/ADST through a cultural lens.”

Noelle Pepin

Nusdeh Yoh ELL/Maker Teacher

@noelle_pepin

REFLECTION

“My role in the SetBC project was one of support. I came in once/week to support the execution

of the lessons. What I learned far outweighed any of the support that I provided. The hands-on

learning, tied in to the aboriginal context and content was a powerful vehicle for student

engagement, access and learning. This project supported access for ALL. There was not one

student that wasn’t engaged, had to have an alternate lesson or was not able to access the

learning. The most at-risk learners were fully engaged in all of the lessons. The project began

where the students were at, and built each time towards the next step. The physical

representations of learning that the students produced were all unique, thoughtful and

representative of innovation and connection. The work done by the team at Nusdeh Yoh is, by

far, some of the best work I have seen across school district #57.”

Katie Marren

District Resource Teacher Conditions for Learning ~ Differentiation/UDL

RESOURCES

• Twitter: @INDIGital_space, @noelle_pepin

• Code.org

• Learn BC (March 2017) Code-ifying the curriculum

• Code BC: http://codebc.ca/

• CUE BC: http://cuebc.ca/cue/2016/01/21/bcs-new-coding-curriculum/

• Lightbot: https://lightbot.com/

• Thinkersmith Travelling circuits: https://csedweek.org/files/CSEDrobotics.pdf