CSEd Week. That does not apply to me you say, "I teach language arts, I teach music, I teach Art.....".
I get it! I get you! I was a classroom teacher once also. CSEd Week is, well, for the CS, Tech, Math teachers. I understand. As a fellow educator indulge me for just a minute, I want to share with you what I have realized over the years. First-lets forget the term Coding, Ok, read on.
Language Arts. Giving directions. Teaching students to give clear, precise, sequential directions (inputs) if done well results in a desired output. Your directions are successful if the desired output occurs. Successful Computer Science is all about the ability to communicate and give directions. Without these Language Art skills there would be no coding.
Music. Timing. Patterns. Repeats. Variations in instruments, sounds, rhythm. Todays musicians have software available to them to experiment, try something new, accept, reject, tweak. Computer Science has become an integral part of composition, arrangement and production of music.
Art. Creativity. Open Ended. Patterns.
All of these descriptors overlap with what is described as Computational Thinking (CT) skills. These skills include decomposition, pattern recognition, abstraction, and algorithms and are identified as key problem solving skills applied in Computer Science, and should be applied in all subject areas.* "They" say CT is critical for Computer Science..and Computer Science seems to be "everything" lately.
Here is what I have realized. These CT skills and coding concepts are skills that have always and still occur across all subject areas naturally. Coding does not have a license on this. No matter what you teach, Computational Thinking (CT), occurs organically, meaningfully, and so seamlessly we often don't realize it.
Take CSEd Week to celebrate how CT skills are happening in your curriculum. As you can see through aforementioned examples, you don't have to be teaching a coding language to identify and celebrate examples occurring in your classroom. You are already teaching CT and CS without even realizing it. And when you find it, celebrate it during CSED Week, and take the mystery out of CS and CT Skills. *(I like the Barefoot Computing resource for CT, which you can find here.)
Join me with Jessica Caramdhany from Whymaker for a FREE half hour webinar bringing meaningful activities YOU can implement for CSEdWeek in your K-8 classroom. Register https://tinyurl.com/3zhzcxas and join us Thursday | Nov 30 | 5:30 EST