Wellington Catholic DSB continues to be blessed with the support of Dr. George Gadinidis through the MKN in working with our educators to increase comfort and confidence with coding.
“Dr. George” has provided us with grade-level afterschool meetings to explore coding concepts as well as guide us through the learning materials he and his team have created. These materials, which have been shared throughout our district, allow educators to see the curriculum links to coding as a tool to support a variety of important concepts. In addition, due to their progressive nature, educators are able to meet learners where they are at in their coding journey as well as challenging those who are ready for more.
Here are some comments from participants in these workshops:
“The kids will play around with it and figure all kinds of things out way ahead of any lesson I get to.”
“Thank you so much for this introduction…it’s helped to be able to practice with some support”
“I understand it so much better now!”
“I might actually be able to do this! Thanks!”
In addition to his work with our elementary educators, we also have a project involving a small group of grade 7 through 9 educators who are investigating how coding can support and encourage math understanding through the transition from elementary to secondary school. Specifically, these educators will create and/or implement some “low floor, high ceiling” inclusive tasks that use coding as a tool to access concepts across the curriculum for learners in grades 7 through 9. Grade 9 math educators in this project will be exploring tasks that we anticipate will be useful within the new de-streamed credit which will be offered starting September 2021.
Funding from the Math Knowledge Network has been used to allow teachers the time to attend workshops and to meet in teams, to co-plan, and to work to produce teaching/learning resources for the transition grades of 7-9.
Our transition coding team will continue to work together this spring, and hope to share their work with intermediate colleagues at an afterschool workshop in June.
We are very lucky to have these opportunities to meet coding with enthusiasm in our district!