Playing with Puzzlets!
Have you ever imagined what programming looks like in an early childhood classroom? Certainly the tech world is a-buzz with programming at any grade level considering the well deserved national attention that Hour of Code, codecademy, and Scratch Jr., have been receiving. But in reality, programming with four and five year old looks much differently than expected. In Fox Chapel’s O’Hara Elementary it is perfectly scaffolded and superbly planned by a master of both STEAM and early childhood pedagogy. Alison Francis’s curricula has finally taken form, and we see it realized in the enthusiasm, learning, and questioning on these little faces. Beginning with robot turtles students explore the basics of cause effect and algebraic expressions. Rather quickly you see students picking up concepts that take weeks or months to elucidate in a traditional teaching format. Next up- code a friend or parent. That’s right, students created a living code, by identifying a path for a friend or parent thorough a nine square grid (see image). Soon they are onto the really cool stuff. And in this case the really cool stuff is the interactive magic of Puzzlets. You certainly can’t find this in your local toys r us, but with some digging Fox Chapel found this amazing device for a steal of a price from a starter company in East Liberty. Puzzlets enables students to connect to their tablet device (in this case iPad minis) and use student friendly (yet programmingly solid) symbols to capture prizes and advance through game levels. The interactive cloudboard creates an easily manipulated sequence for their logical reasoning. Students’ problem solving is finally visible in a step-by-step format. Once again Pittsburgh’s local talent of CMU grads and teacher ingenuity transforms learning for our students.
Coding my dad!
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