Communication, Coding and Literacy

Our whole school vision this year is inquiring into STEM and I have been incorporating aspects of this into my ESOL/Literacy program through out the year as part of my teacher inquiry. Our main reasons to incorporate STEM are to support our learners to target and increase exposure to:

-Real World experiences
-Collaboration
-Research
-Problem Solving
-Creativity

The skills we would like the students to learn from this over the school are:

Science- Chemistry and Physics
Electronics
Coding
Robotics

Some of the key concepts are Computational Thinking, Pattern Recognition and Algebraic Thinking.

So I was excited to find out about Lisa Liukas and her book "Hello Ruby. Adventures in Coding."

Here is a quick sketch that I made in January at our teacher only day:

Here is the opening idea from Lisa's book from Chapter 1 Activities: " All big problems are just tiny problems stuck together. Sometimes the only way to learn something new is to make a lot of mistakes first." Page 70

So her ideas really struck a chord with me as my initial vision from that day link closely with hers. I really love how she has a story about Ruby and her friends with each character helping Ruby. Looking through Lisa's book she has some amazing and very kid and teacher friendly ways to approach concepts such as sequence, decomposition and pattern recognition all in the first chapter! Her passion for storytelling and utilizing picture books to teach children about programming and coding really resonate with me.

I am looking forward to using Lisa's book to  find out more about coding alongside my students next term!

Communication, STEM, Inquiry (CSI)

Recently I have changed my ESOL planning to streamline what I do and to give the students more opportunities to explore language through inquiry. This term we are inquiring into our 5 senses to find out about food and drink. The overarching reason is to increase knowledge of English through real life experiences.

Our 'CSI' (Communication, STEM and Inquiry) has been embraced by the students and they look forward to our STEM 'challenge' workshops and baking. Students enjoy trying new kinds of food and drink and even sharing their own recipes with their peers.

It has really boosted the confidence of students to try new things and to start to think about food hygiene, healthy food options and sometimes treats. 

We have used Seesaw to share our learning with family and teachers. In doing so students have increased student voice and choice over what they share and have gained a feeling of pride about their learning. 

I look forward to continuing our CSI investigation in Term 4 and I am planning to add Coding into the Communication component. Watch this space!