Observation:

As the Digital Sciences Team and MTAC develop strategies to prepare students for the future, we plan to increase students' coding and computational thinking skills by continuing to providing programming opportunities, which incorporate newly developed NC CS standards, across the curriculum.

Discussion:

Building on our successful Teacher Leader program from 2019-20, a new group of teachers participated in the Citadel's summer InfusingComputing professional learning program where they developed coding lessons for their subject area and grade level. These teachers will join the existing Teacher Leaders in implementing their coding lessons with students and assisting other teachers with coding projects.

Proposal:

Continuing our work with the FI and sharing the knowledge of both groups of InfusingComputing teacher leaders, we will carry on with Snap coding implementation for all RCMMS teachers and students. The teachers will create at least one lesson using Snap to deliver during the 2020-21 school year and they will add the skills and standards addressed in the lesson to our comprehensive shared data sheet.

Implementation:

The Digital Sciences Team/Media Technology Advisory Committee will continue to promote personalized learning during “Tech Thursdays” throughout the school year. These trainings will team teachers with FI experts and teacher leaders and assigned "buddys" who will assist with development of coding lessons. Self-guided training in Snap and Python coding will remain available on our RCMMS Snap! Website which teachers can access at any time. FI project staff and teacher leaders will join teachers to assist with live implementation of coding lessons in their classrooms or virtual implementation where students code remotely in virtual meets. To facilitate this learning, FI and RCMMS have set up Virtual Buddy Programming to enable peer programming from remote locations.

Expected Outcome:

Faculty will feel confident creating and implementing -- live or through remote learning structures -- increasingly challenging coding lessons in their classrooms, and Reedy Creek will have an expanded repository of coding lessons for each grade level and subject area which will track which coding skills, computational thinking skills, and CS standards have been addressed in each lesson. From this, teachers can build additional curriculum to target skills which still need to be taught in order to provide an expanded 21st century skillset for all RCMMS students.

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