Listen. Connect. Empower.

I have been coding with students for years now.  Most Decembers we spend problem solving and students love it.  I did too.  For a while.  Then I started questioning how this authentically fit in my mission to " grow readers ."  I struggled with this significantly.  When I did a collaborative coding project several years back it made sense.  Simply exploring different coding activities didn't feel so authentic and true to who I want to be as a librarian.  So, it was time to change things up.   Student work for our introductory coding lesson The pros: My brain eats up coding and this could have been a game-changing moment for me as a student if I had been introduced to coding at a young age.   This is problem solving!  This isn't taught anywhere else in our school!   This is opportunity and exposure for students!   The cons: I am abandoning reading books to students for the month to do this.   ...

I just love it when multiple ideas/concepts come together.  Our coding experience was an example of that this year. We have been celebrating the Hour of Code for the last 7 years.  I love the problem solving and teamwork I see when students code.  However,  I have been struggling with where and how this fits into our library program.  It was feeling like an isolated unit that didn't authentically fit.  I was inspired at #AASL19 by  Ashley Cooksey's  work and how she integrated picture books and coding.  I decided this was the year for change.  I used the month of December to read diverse picture books and problem solve (code). Diverse picture books for coding Wendy Garland's favorite books » Share book reviews and ratings with Wendy, and even join a book club on Goodreads. Why? One of my goals for the year was to audit books chosen to read aloud to stu...

Our music teacher obtained grants to take the entire 2nd grade district-wide to see the Nutcracker .  We worked together to prepare our students for what they would see on the stage ( see my last post ).  Following the field trip, students wrote about their favorite part of the ballet.  One teacher decided to take her students' writing one step farther and venture into an unknown world to her - computer programming.  Together, we had these 2nd graders code their experience.  Within an hour and a half these 2nd grade students who had never used Scratch Jr before had created scenes from the Nutcracker like this battle scene with the Nutcracker and the Mouse King. I was coding with my 2nd graders during Library time and giving them choices for coding activities.  However, I decided to use my limited time wisely with this particular class and use our time to get familiar with Scratch Jr (a program they had never used before). Day 1: We learned how...