95% Skills and 5% Luck: A Recipe for Searching Success

I have had a lot of success this week in my search for resources about coding in the early elementary classroom. My initial search tactic was to start with a general Google search of “coding” to get an idea of what was out there. I quickly learned that there was a lot out there on this topic! Seeing as I am teaching in a grade 1 and grade 2 classrooms during Manitoba’s code orange, I altered my search to “teaching coding elementary” and found some more relevant results. In fact, sifting through resources to see which will best fit my context seems to be the biggest challenge with the topic I’ve selected! 


Retrieved on January 31, 2021 from https://svanews.com/2016/07/19/how-to-make-search-more-efficient-searching-on-google-tips/

Sites varied in quality and I found many which hosted lists of ideas (such as this example) but offered little to no specific advice. These were not very helpful as they had a dizzying amount of imbedded links  and simply lead me down an internet rabbit hole until I was lost and couldn’t remember what my initial search had been! Other sites were gold mines of information. One such website is code.org which hosts a vast array of lessons catered to specific age-based audiences and abilities. Games, courses, lessons and lesson plans are all freely offered. 

I was cognizant of wanting more than just the practical how-to’s but also the philosophical why of teaching coding. For this I searched the database of the University of British Columbia for articles about coding with early elementary students. These search parameters were easier to control than on the Google search engine, but search results were less numerous. It turns out there are not many peer-reviewed journal articles on the subject of early elementary school coding! I was thrilled to find one article entitle The Nuts and Bots of Math and Coding in the Lower Grades (Winters, Winters & Kimmons, 2020) which offered some examples of coding activities that helped strengthen math concepts in the younger grades. 

Finally, being a visual learner, I turned to Youtube to look for some examples of how teachers share about the exciting world of coding with their students. As I was sifting through the search results, something completely unexpected popped up on the side bar. I was delighted to discover Think Like a Coder which is features a cartoon character which must escape a room and solve mysteries to save herself and her robotic friend. Each episode reinforces and teaches coding concepts such as loops, if/then code, etc... This was a happy surprise and a good reminder that sometimes good search results are a product of luck as much as anything. I feel confident that I have a good start with my research and will work towards rounding out my annotated bibliography by continuing the search for other types of resources to help me in my coding teaching efforts.

References:

Code.org (2021). https://code.org

Ted-Ed. (2021, 01, 31) Think Like a  Coder, Episode 1: The Prison Break. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFVdHDMcepw

Winters, J. J., Winters, K.E., & Kimmins, D. L. (2020). The Nuts and Bots of Math and Coding in the Lower Grades. Mathematics Teacher: Learning and Teaching PK-12, 113(8), p.628-636


Comments

  1. Aaron MuellerFebruary 2, 2021 at 6:21 AM

    Well done checkin post on your progress and early results. You did a good job describing your experience, challenges and successes so far in finding appropriate, age-level and insightful resources and tools to support exploring coding with elementary students. A good description of what you found, how you found it, as well as a good overview of how and why you evolved your search terms and locations. So good that you found an excellent youtube series to support instruction on some of these key concepts. Overall, a well done review and reflection on your inquiry so far.

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