Hello beholders of the CSCS Project!
The acronym behind our title the CSCS Project, ‘Chinese Speaking Computer Science,’ communicates the objective of our English programming: other-language acquisition. The team is compiled of two native Chinese speakers, one Spanish fluent student, and a born-and-raised Oregon with close ties to the Japanese language. As a team of four, we recognize acquisition and speaking of other languages as being an asset. Being that computer science is a language of its own, we feel that having third graders learning Chinese as part of the curriculum not only provides an extra dose of intrigue to the work, but it also accommodates conversation about the types of skills that teachers are looking to help their students achieve through the connection of language learning.
In a series of five lesson plans, the CSCS Project endeavors to provide curriculum fit for an International Week (or any other week) nicely connected to the objectives of Kodable objectives for third graders. In a clear, cute, and concise way, the team is collaborating in the development of lesson plans that provide instruction, workshop opportunity in Scratch, peer-sharing, group-sharing, and personal reflection. Within the workshop time, the team has worked to provide materials for students to not only learn to use the Scratch software, but also catch ‘bugs’ and fix them. In the sequence, the lessons are meant to build off one another to reach a satisfying, cumulative conclusion at the end of the five day week.
Please keep up to date with our project as we look to teach third graders computational thinking alongside Mandarin Chinese activities housed within the wonderful world of Scratch. We hope you enjoy what you see.