How we created a computer science curriculum in 5 steps

Even with a strict price range, restricted instructor experience in computer science, and the chaos of a pandemic, the Metropolitan Faculty District of Pike Township (MSDPT) launched a complete and engaging K-5 laptop science curriculum for every single scholar.

As an instructional expert at MSDPT all through the start, I now have an understanding of how a lot collaboration, clever source management, and challenging operate are expected to operate a effective K-5 laptop or computer science system. 

As personal computer science has been released into the national highlight, universities across the state are acquiring methods to combine STEM themes into early education and learning. Even though we confronted difficulties at MSDPT, we had been in a position to discover remedies that match our spending budget and empowered our current college to train this specialized subject matter with self confidence.

In this article are the steps we took to start our program and the lessons we realized along the way.

1. Get started smaller.

Launching a districtwide K-5 laptop science curriculum was not a a person-stage course of action. Rather, we commenced smaller. 1st, MSDPT released a pc science course through a limited summer months enrichment application. Every single class only had about 30 readily available places, but these spots loaded up each individual yr in a make a difference of times. When we saw how popular computer system science was with our college students and found out that Indiana experienced a computer science state mandate coming before long, we begun to approach how to launch a much more in depth K-5 laptop science system.