Hello everyone; welcome to our video!  We are excited to hear your thoughts and questions around the integration of computational thinking (CT) into preschool literacy activities. If you have any questions about our project, please let us know. Also, please feel free to comment about any successes/challenges you see in your own related work or things that we can think through together in order to accomplish our goals of providing equitable teaching and learning around CT.

I really enjoyed your video and project.  What were the most profound lessons you learned through your work? 

What’s been most profound for the project team has been our success in developing a new and innovative model for integrating CT into early preschool literacy activities, and the evidence that the model is promising. The use of stories with predictable patterns to promote CT skills is well-aligned with what is already happening in preschool classrooms. And, because reading books is a practice that teachers are already very comfortable with, they can build upon it with their students to promote CT. Children are also embracing the model, using CT skills such as problem decomposition, pattern recognition, and abstraction as they develop an understanding how a story can unfold in a predictable way.

I love this work and it is exciting that it is being formalized in a way that can be shared easily for preschools to incorporate in their practice. The American Library Association's Ready to Code initiative found very similar things, that library staff were very comfortable with and knowledgeable about early reading and working with little ones to find patterns in familiar stories, and that the kids and educators were excited to extend the storytime hours they were already doing with additional activities that dug into CT. Librarians Claudia Haines (Alaska) and Paula Langstrom (DC) have come up with some great activities in that area. Wondering there is a possible pre-school-library crossover!

Thank you, Caitlin! We learned similar things on prior preschool CT library projects (described below, our newest one is in partnership with ALA's Ready to Code initiative and Claudia Haines is an advisor)! In fact, we referred to library staff as our CT Champions!

With funding from NSF, GBH and EDC collaborated with the BUILD initiative (an organization that works with state systems, providing them with planning, support, technical assistance and evaluation services) to iteratively developed and tested CT programming and learning resources for preschool children and families via library and kindergarten readiness programs in two states. In Mississippi, we worked with Mississippi Public Broadcasting (MPB), the state Department of Education, and the state Library Commission to develop resources for family CT programming at libraries. In Maryland, we worked with Maryland Public Television (MPT) and Ready at Five (Maryland’s school readiness program, run through the Department of Education, Early Childhood Division) to develop resources for CT “Learning Parties”—multi-session, interactive, parent/child parties that promote parents’ education as well as young children’s development of school readiness skills. 

With our current NSF-funded grant, EDC and GBH are developing a new library model, working in rural communities in Mississippi and Kentucky, with the aim of building librarians’ CT content knowledge and self-efficacy and enabling them to serve as both virtual and in-person CT mentors to families with young children. To support at-home CT exploration, we are creating a series of mobile apps that will guide families through sets of animated videos and hands-on activities, and a new, digital music video feature that will encourage families to reflect on their CT experiences. Dissemination partners include: Public Library Association, ALA’s Libraries Ready to Code, and the BUILD Initiative.

I can't wait to see your video - sounds right up my alley! 

What a lovely and worthwhile project! I wonder how exactly you are helping/supporting teachers and librarians with CT... Including parents with their children is wonderful.

Thanks for your interest in the ways we’re supporting librarians and parents in engaging young children in CT!  You might be interested in our program featured in the 2019 STEM For All Video Showcase, Digital Media and Parent/Child Engagement Resources to Increase Preschool Computational Thinking.  For that program, we created a Library Guide with resources for introducing preschoolers and their families to computational thinking in six one-hour sessions.

This is great!  I am curious about what types of supports preschool teachers needed to better understand CT.  Are there any tips you can share that helped the teachers support CT skills along with literacy skills?  Thanks for sharing this project.

Thanks for your question about preschool teacher supports—our effort to develop them has been one of most intriguing and challenging parts of this project!

We’re still piloting the intervention, but so far the formative research has revealed a number of important questions from teachers: they’ve asked us to be more explicit about the educational and developmental benefits of learning CT in preschool, and they are especially interested in learning more about the connection between CT and early literacy skills. In response to the latter, we’re developing the following supports:     

• A five-step model that walks teachers through The Story Emporium’s activities and illustrates the literacy and CT skills children would practice during each step. One teacher responded to an early version of the model by saying, “I think the materials make it easy for the five-step process to be understood. It’s basically a five-piece puzzle that can be used and reused with different books to help children understand the simple elements of literacy.”
• A table illustrating the CT–literacy connection by describing an early literacy skill, the corresponding CT skill, and then how both come together in The Story Emporium activities. The table can also double as a way for teachers to assess student understanding by offering concrete examples of what preschool CT skills might look like.

Here are the CT skills we’ve focused on and how we understand their relation to storytelling:

• Decomposition: How a story can be broken down into story elements
• Sequencing: How story elements follow a certain order
• Pattern Recognition: How story elements repeat in a predictable way
• Algorithmic Thinking: How to use the pattern (the step-by-step instructions, called the algorithm) to create a new version of the story by changing some of the elements
• Logical Reasoning: How the story elements are connected to one another in a way that makes logical sense
• Debugging: How to notice and correct a mistake in the story pattern

Bravo to all for this wonderful discussion! Thank you for viewing and adding your questions and expertise. Please share the STEM Showcase with others so they can participate in the discussion too. Let's get more educators involved in viewing these top projects. Voting and discussion ends on May 18th at 8PM EDT. (but viewing is open anytime) https://stemforall2021.videohall.com/

For presenters, what are your next steps going forward?

Great work! To echo previous comments, have you integrated caregivers into your pilot study and evaluation due to the pandemic?