Week 1 Coding

 

Coding

                           Learner 1a: How can I enhance student learning by setting goals and integrating a multitude of teaching strategies for Computational Thinking?

                          Learner 1c: Leverage CT and CS experts, resources and professional learning networks to continuously improve practice integrating CT across content areas.

This week I had the opportunity to explore a few online coding games. The games explored how functions work in computer coding. I learned functions are a specific set of instructions to accomplish a certain task. I pictured functions as a ready made recipe that I gave my computer so it could create the code automatically without me having to provide the individual steps every time.

    While playing the coding games I saw how I could make goals for my students to reach certain levels and use strategies such as thinking ahead/making predictions and writing out their steps to solve the game. In the first video I show how there are possible teaching points within the game Functions with Artist and the second video is me explaining functions and showing how to play the game Minecraft Coding.

    These games as I said would be great for teaching predictions or planning steps. We teach these in multiple content areas such as math, science, and reading. I am a math major and teaching students step by step procedures is extremely important such as using PEMDAS. This could be an introductory lesson on how we break down the situation into the singular steps of the process.