Digital Literacy skills can begin early. Students who learn to collaborate, communicate, and design begin to build portrait of a graduate skills.
NC recently defined their new portrait of a graduate competencies as: adaptability, collaboration, communication, critical thinking, empathy, learner’s mindset, and personal responsibility. These skills will help students thrive in a 21st century after graduate as they enter the workforce or higher education. It is never too early to start focusing on these competencies not just for graduation preparation but also for kindergarten readiness on through middle school readiness.
In this session join some of our STEAM and regular classroom teachers as we explore and try activities curated thanks to the Digital Learning Impact Grant that can be used to build these skills through coding. Join us to explore and try the activities we use to engage students in these skills starting in Prek and continuing all the way through elementary school. You will leave the session with access to our digital pacing for this work that includes alignment to the ISTE standards for students and portrait of a graduate skills. These activities can be integrated into the general classroom or the STEAM/STEM/Media class.
Beginning in our PreK classes as well as our community PreK outreach, the activities students engage with work to develop a common language and common questioning stems. As students move through the grade levels this consistent language is utilized both in the STEAM classroom and in the regular classroom to work through the design process. When students engage in these coding challenges with a group or partner they access collaboration skills that are so much more valuable than working in isolation by themselves. Most of the activities used require simple, readily available materials. Some activities require the use of various coding apps or robots that could be interchanged with any available robots or devices.
