Kids Who Code Project: Part 1

This is a post from Mrs. Lowe

I am so lucky to work in a profession where professional learning is encouraged and supported. Each year the Manitoba Teacher's Society provides grants for teachers to reflect and build on their professional practice.  Last year I was approach by Leah Obach and Devon Caldwell to submit a proposal to research and test the value of coding with kindergarten students. Coding is basically the language that computer programmers use to create programs, web pages, games, etc. We wanted to see if coding could be used as a tool for developing critical and logical thinking skills. We were ecstatic when we found out that our proposal was accepted.

A couple of weeks ago we spent an entire day working together on this project. Devon and Leah met at their local high school and I joined them via Skype. We made a plan for the day using One Drive. We started out by viewing a number of webinars, reading articles and blog posts. Then we uploaded apps, tested them and reviewed each of them.

Excited to be working with awesome teachers and friends!

Our exploring led us to an event called the Hour of Code on Friday, December 12. It looked very exciting but it would not be nearly enough time to cover everything we had planned. In addition, we have decided to do an entire week of coding activities to be concluded with a Code-A-Thon!


As with most projects, it's more fun to work with friends, so we have decided to connect with other classes through Skype and even teach our grade 2 buddies about coding. It will be fun to see the kindergarten students in the role of teacher to their big buddies.

Please stay posted for updates on this exciting project!

You can read Devon's post here
You can read Leah's post here