Can I use Coding to Teach Reading?

I believe that students will read when they are ready, but I also believe in immersing students in an environment rich in opportunity to build and practice literacy skills.  When I began working as a K-5 technology integration specialist, I didn’t think I would be programming with my pre-reading students.  I had always experienced coding as text-based and really complex. In the late 90’s I hand coded a 500 page web based poem in HTML (no link, sorry, I think it is lost to the ages), but once I started looking into coding for kids, I was delighted by how accessible coding and programming have become in the last 15 years.

My school uses shared iPads in the lower school, so all of the tools I am exploring are ipad based. When I met Jon and Grechen from Kodable, their game-style coding interface really changed how I thought about the possibilities of coding with pre-readers. You can read more about my early adventures with Kodable here.

When I saw how quickly students got into the code-based challenges, I started asking questions:

• How can I use this high-engagement tool to meet other learning goals beyond ‘tech class.’  

• What does coding have in common with reading?

• Can I use this tool to get my students ready to read?

The Tools available to me

in this puzzle you build the word by matching the letters

• What kind of program will I begin to get my kids interacting with literacy concepts in Scratch Jr?

• Can I use the camera to bring pages of our favorite classroom books into the coding environment?

• How can I guide students to record letter and word sounds using the microphone blocks?

• Is there a way to share a program to my students in Scratch Jr, or do I have to build them individually?

• What does differentiation look like in this environment?

Kodable is a puzzle-style interface and as students progress through levels they are introduced to increasingly complex challenges and sophisticated coding concepts.  They also have some puzzles called Fuzzy Fun designed to support reading, vocabulary and spelling.  

Scratch Jr is more of an ‘open studio’ experience.  This iPad app is built on a foundation of Logo.  As I was reading Invent to Learn I was emboldened and guided by the author’s advice to create starter programs students can interact with and build on.  So now my questions begin:

I am working on a lesson, and I have a program partly written, but I have gotten stuck on an idea.  This happens to me when I want to be able to do something and i can’t think my way around what I want to do in order to interact with the app on its own terms.  In this case I was to use text as a character in the program.  I have become spoiled by Hopscotch.

 I am hoping the team at Scratch Jr can help me figure this out.  If I had Text as a character I could set up a collision rule.  When my main character runs into the word it would play a recording of the word.  The students could record this sounds, or sort through pre-loaded sounds to find the right one.

What are your ideas?  I will continue to share what I figure out as i learn, but I think we all need to work together to get this right.