Lisa DickYou are probably familiar with the term growth mindset referring to nurturing a students’ attitude toward failure with a focus on growth not fixed on failure. Just a quick search on the Teacher Pay Teacher website results in almost 6,000 resources with everything from posters such as these awesome ones from Tales of Miss D to coloring pages such as these created by To the Square Inch,
While I feel growth mindset should be promoted in every classroom, there is another mindset that is equally important, a coding mindset. A quick Google search will provide over 10 million results, but they typically won’t be specific to K12 education without a few boolean search tricks. So what exactly is a coding mindset? I’m so glad you asked.
A coding mindset at its core is just what you would expect, training your brain to code. WAIT, don’t stop here because it is so much more! A coding mindset can actually begin before a child can read. Yes, you read that right! Let’s start with a glimpse into an early elementary classroom. One of my favorite apps on my ActivConnect G is Scratch Jr.
The Scratch Jr app allows students to add characters, change backgrounds, and animate. The animation is created by drag and drop puzzle pieces. Here is where the fun comes in…students are actually coding the animation! Each puzzle piece color represents a type of function such as a motion, trigger, sound, look, control, or end. Printed on the puzzle piece is a graphic to represent its function such as an arrow pointing right. To further develop the coding mindset teachers would integrate related vocabulary.
Through the integration of similar resources and vocabulary, students develop a coding mindset fostering computational and critical thinking skills as well as creativity! Are you ready to learn about more resources and specific standards-aligned activities for your students to develop a coding mindset? Stay tuned for the next part of this series in which we will cover direction, block, and written code.
