The focus of this paper is to investigate how elementary students learned computer science concepts through storytelling in Scratch. To serve this purpose, we conducted artifact interviews with 4th graders who were engaged with a computer science (CS) integrated module in their English language arts (ELA) class. Students created stories in Scratch with a focus on character traits. The constructionist design of the Scratch tool supports student learning through tinkering, the creation of meaningful artifacts, and through the theatrical metaphor that underlies interface design. This paper explores how two 4th graders demonstrated their CS/CT and ELA knowledge through the design of a Scratch artifact and how Scratch facilitated this interdisciplinary learning. While there have been studies in middle school and in after-school contexts that focus on digital storytelling and writing, there are few papers that examine interdisciplinary integration in the formal school context at the elementary level.
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Integrating Coding and Language Arts: A View into Sixth Graders’ Multimodal and Multilingual Learning
In this article, we share examples from our project, Participating in Literacies and Computer Science (PiLaCS), which focuses on how students' language practices shape their participation and engagement in language arts projects that integrate code. Integrating Code into Language Arts: Ashley's Multimodal Translanguaging Approach Tasked with fulfilling her school's commitment to CS for All within her sixth grade bilingual language arts class, Ashley chose to teach a unit with a software and programming language called Scratch, created at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to support creative approaches to code (https://scratch.mit.edu/). What follows are examples from Ashley's class that demonstrate how a CS-integrated language arts curriculum provided her students with space to engage, create, and communicate using language, text, and their bodies in dynamic expressions. Álvaro's dynamic expression of sliding across the room animated his understanding of the connection between the text and the code, showing how integrating code into language arts provides a forum for students' language practices to be integrated and validated.
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- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10186626
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Voices from the middle
- Volume:
- 27
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 1943-3069
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 47-52
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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