Thanks for the question. There have been many lessons learned during this project. Two that come to mind immediately are: (1) the need for deep knowledge of both math and CS education as well as inclusive pedagogies in order to create authentically integrated materials, and (2) The importance of creating robust teacher materials including lesson plans, instructional videos, etc. alongside professional development given that the teachers in our study were new to CS (even though they were not new to math instruction). 

Thank you so much, Maya. think your approach definitely meet these key outcomes.  I agree that deep knowledge of math and CS (as well as those pedagogies) is essential.  Along with the creation of robust teacher materials, effective training on these materials are key to their understanding of the what and HOW to reach the minds of their students.  Have your reached out to NCTM to share your project?  I would love to see your presentation at their next national conference.  

The classrooms we worked with all used it with the Everyday Mathematics curriculum. We provided professional development each summer to help teachers be confident in coding in general, the Action Fractions curriculum, and how the mathematics and coding worked integrated. We are working now to retool the teacher materials so that they do not depend on resources provided by the EM curriculum.

Thanks for the question Josie. Our intent was to do pre/post in math instruction and three CT assessments (early, mid, and late). Because of COVID, our pre/post assessment was disrupted. We have math pre-assessments as well as the early and mid CT assessments. Our analysis has had to greatly pivot given these challenges. We are currently looking at math preassessment data as a potential independent variable when looking at the CT early and mid assessments. We are also looking at the CT item performance, error analysis, and CT understanding across different item types instead of our original plan. 

Flexibility is key during these times!  It sounds like there will still be data to show how student understanding of CT is influenced by this project.  Thanks for sharing.

Oh, Andy is perpetually youthful, despite his impending retirement. There definitely are synergies from earlier attempts at CS + math, though I feel like this is a slightly different approach. A lot of early work was in Logo and looking at geometry and drawing with the turtle. Technology today enables a lot more variety in the the different ways we can integrate math and coding instruction.

Wow.  I think Andy is a bit my junior, so maybe I should start thinking about retirement.  I did work with Max Bell and Karen Fuson before Amoco put its first dime into EM and UCSMP and while the turtle was making its first appearances in educational technology.  Max was on my dissertation committee.  if you need a funny story on this matter, I am happy to dish.  :)

Wonderful! If your students have never used Scratch, I would suggest doing a subset of the 3rd grade ones (as fractions review) before doing the 4th grade ones. It does build CT skills across the two years.

Thank you very much. I will do that.