NSF Awards: 2031258
The goal of Computer Science For and By Teachers: An Integrative Toolkit for 3rd-5th Grade Classrooms is to create and iteratively test a professional development model and integration toolkit that provides 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade teachers the skills and resources to create and continually adapt their own culturally relevant, CS/CT-integrated lesson plans for their own diverse classrooms.
This 3-year project is co-led and developed by a Researcher-Practitioner Partnership. RPP members include 8 K5 educators (5 teachers, 1 library media specialist, 1 peer administrator, 1 division-level administrator) from 2 school districts, 3 researchers from 2 state universities, and 1 leader from a statewide CS education nonprofit.
Anita Crowder
Research and Evaluation Manager
Thank you for watching the Computer Science For And By Teachers: An Integrative Toolkit for 3rd-5th Grade Classrooms (CSFAB-Teachers)! We have just completed our first year of this three year Researcher-Practitioner Partnership (RPP) project. The goal of CSFAB-Teachers is to develop and implement a toolkit of resources, including professional development, sample lesson plans, and an educator community, to support elementary teachers to integrate culturally relevant computer science across core content areas and increase awareness of their own cultural competence. The video features reflections of some of our amazing RPP members on the first year of our project. We look forward to your feedback, questions, and discussion!
Michael Berson
Sheila Mosby
Instructional/ Career Coach
Thank You so much for watching the CSFAB video. It has been a great year working together to learn, plan, create and develop lessons for this toolkit and to prepare the implementation of the same. Being a part of this RPP has been nothing short of phenomenal. I hope you enjoy this short excerpt of the great things we are doing within.
Anita Crowder
Michael Berson
Michael Berson
I enjoyed watching the video. I am very excited about the use of RPP in the elementary grades!
Sheila Mosby
Anita Crowder
Anita Crowder
Research and Evaluation Manager
Thank you! We are excited about the possibilities of the project as well!
Sheila Mosby
Instructional/ Career Coach
Thank You !! We are very excited about the upcoming implementation and the impact it will have on student content learning; and, more importantly, the impact on the minds of the students who are receiving a more in depth understanding of computer science (beyond 'computer time"). Creating win-win possibilities and endless opportunities for opening doors for thoughts of future career paths while in elementary school.
Rebecca Dovi
Love that this research is centered in schools with teachers designing along side researchers!
Sheila Mosby
Anita Crowder
Sheila Mosby
Instructional/ Career Coach
Thank you!! It is a wonderful relationship bridging the research and practice.
Anita Crowder
Carolyn White
I enjoyed watching the video and how facilitators of the program noticed how students were given culturatlly relevant lessonsthrought the use of CS to enhance understandings.
Courtnee Austin
Anita Crowder
Anita Crowder
Research and Evaluation Manager
The expertise of the featured RPP educators has been invaluable to the project! Thank you so much for watching!
David Kung
Director of Policy
Looks like these sorts of lessons are both very engaging for students and deeply grounded in educators' expertise.
Can you say a little more about what skills, competencies, and attitudes you see students developing through these lessons? How do you imagine students' trajectories being changed?
What do you think are the challenges of doing an intervention like this at scale - across many schools, districts, or states?
Courtnee Austin
Anita Crowder
Anita Crowder
Research and Evaluation Manager
Hello! Thank you for the questions. In Virginia, one of the goals of the 2017 K12 computer science standards was to ensure that all students have the opportunity to engage in computer science. Part of our project is to support elementary educators in their understanding of the standards so that they can build their lessons to effectively address them. We are working with two school divisions with differing student demographics, so a potential challenge to scaling for us in Virginia at this moment is being very clear about what culturally relevant teaching means and how the pedagogy can be effective for every student.
Sheila Mosby
Courtnee Austin
Title 1 Math Teacher
I would definitely agree that being clear about what culturally relevant teaching is and how the pedagogy can be effective for every student is very necessary. Working on this project has helped me be more intentional with lesson creation and incorporating the CRT checklist. Educators have to know the communities they service. In the current climate, CRT is looked at in a negative light and that is a challenge.
Anita Crowder
Francheska Figueroa
Great project and video! I'm wondering if you can share a bit more about the CRT checklist. I thought one of the presenters stated that the lessons were looking beyond using a traditional checklist when including CRT pedagogical practices. I may have to rewatch ; )
Anita Crowder
Betsy Seymour
Thank you so much for your question and engaging in our video. It looks like Courtnee Austin addresses this a bit more in detail in her comment just below.
If you're curious or prefer a visual, you can also access these materials above - they are listed under "Resources" to the right of the video just below the project summary.
You do make a great point about the name "checklist" though, and as Courtnee mentions below, we see these materials as functioning more as a guide for the teacher - both as a solo resource (via the "checklist") and within the lesson planning process (as is detailed in the "lesson planning template").
Though, perhaps its time for us to revisit that name. We'd love your suggestions! :)
Anita Crowder
Courtnee Austin
Title 1 Math Teacher
Although we call it a checklist it is more of a reflection area based on the 5 components of culturally relevant teaching. There is a brief description of each and the teacher states where in the lesson it is incorporated. All 5 components don't have to be addressed, however, we have found that in normal teaching practices we are addressing the 5 components. I hope that answered your question. ;)
Carolyn White
Sheila Mosby
Francheska Figueroa
Anita Crowder
Mariam Manuel
This is really cool! Love that your incorporated a CRT framework with it! Would love to see how this looks in lessons. Thank you for this very important work!
Sheila Mosby
Anita Crowder
Anita Crowder
Research and Evaluation Manager
Thank you! We will most likely be sharing some example lessons over the next few months.
Sheila Mosby
Instructional/ Career Coach
Thank you for watching. For me, the important piece and understanding of incorporating the CRT into the lessons is that it is intentional and incorporated on the front-end (in the planning process) and evidenced in writing on the lesson plan template. Much of the time we do not recognize how some of our actions demonstrate cultural responsiveness; therefore, we do not capitalize upon that aspect of the lesson. With this integration, it is brought to the forefront of our thinking and allows teachers to guide and students to recognize, appreciate, celebrate and learn from the differences we all possess.
Anita Crowder
Myriam Steinback
Consultant
This is such interesting and important work. What impact are you seeing on student learning? I'd love to hear about culturally responsive examples that teachers use when teaching CS.
Anita Crowder
Anita Crowder
Research and Evaluation Manager
Thank you for your comment! We are finishing our first year and members of the RPP have created some really interesting lessons incorporating CRT and CS, but we are just started classroom implementation. Hopefully we will have more data to share on student engagement and learning over the next year!
Sheila Mosby
Noelani Ogasawara Morris
Demonstration Teacher
My teaching partner has used Scratch in our classroom as well and I have seen the students light up and persevere through frustrations and challenges in order to successfully create the "game" they had envisioned. I never thought of using Scratch as a way for students to create a presentation of sorts to exhibit their understanding. Can you share some examples of the types of projects that some of the students created?
Anita Crowder
Anita Crowder
Research and Evaluation Manager
Hello! I hope that one of the other RPP members jumps in, but when we walked through this lesson, after discussing the conclusions drawn while using the exemplar Scratch program, we were asked to create our own scenario, share it with others, and then ask others to draw their own conclusions about our scenario. It was actually interesting to see how others interpreted scenarios we may have thought of as "obvious" as something completely different than intended! I am sure that could lead to a lot of fruitful classroom discussion about making evidence-based conclusions (and decisions) as it did for us.
jennifer Knudsen
I love your checklist document. Looks so helpful! I was interested to hear it is more like a reflection guide. I can see that. Maybe a discussion guide, too? I will be interested to hear more about your project as you move forward!
Courtnee Austin
Anita Crowder
Anita Crowder
Research and Evaluation Manager
Thank you for your comment! Understanding your own cultural competence and culturally relevant pedagogy is one of the core elements of our project. A discussion guide is a wonderful idea!
Eyualem Abebe
In a time where coding is so much a factor in STEM career success, I think integrating it so early could be the key to making it accessible to all. Great implementation!
Courtnee Austin
Anita Crowder
Anita Crowder
Research and Evaluation Manager
I agree! Coding and computational thinking are very important to developing students' general problem-solving skills as well. Thank you!