For years, I've watched librarians take a lead in their school's involvement in Hour of Code or Computer Science Education week. So many librarians also provide opportunities for our younger student to learn through creating and making including maker tools and supplies in their libraries. They inspired me to created an ebook with idea cards for hands on making and projects for learning computer science, inspired by the Red Clover book nominees. With support from STEAM educator, Tina Smith, and school librarian, Jessica Wisloski, we launched this e-book at the Vermontfest conference as part of the Vermont-CSTA Computer Science series of workshops and at the interactive popup makerspace that Jessica and Tina
You can find the e-book at https://bit.ly/red-clover-all
The book includes 40 idea cards (4 for each of the Red Clover books). These idea cards include projects and links to resources curated from colleagues as well as web resources. I also designed one or more computer science projects using Scratch for each book.
As part of the Vermont CSTA chapter leader team preparing for Computer Science Education week, I, also, created a version that focused on the computer science projects using Scratch.
You can find the CS version at https://bit.ly/red-clover-cs
For each book, you will find a link to a Scratch project that can be used to introduce students to computer science concepts and practices. Although the CS projects could most easily be completed by students grades 4 and up, younger students could be enaged with parts of the project with support from adults or with older students as mentors.
As I continued to envision students coding the Scratch projects as they engaged with the book, I realized that a teacher/student guide might be helpful. After consulting with my youngest grandchildren about their favorite Red Clover book, I started to create the teacher/student guide for Who's Afraid of the Light by (WAOTL)
You can find the teacher/student guide for Who's Afraid of the Light at https://bit.ly/red-clover-cs-WAOTL
The teacher/student guide for Who's Afraid of the Light includes 6+ Computer Science Challenge Cards that can be used in several ways. Each challenge introduces a limited set of code-blocks that can build a mini Scratch project related to the book. Each challenge also offers a link to a Scratch project that can be used to scaffold the experience. Students can choose to look inside each Scratch project or remix the projects. They could also build the project from scratch (pun intended). Educators could use the Challenge Cards and supporting slides to lead students using whole group instruction, or they can make them available as handout for students to explore and try.
The Challenge cards are made available through Creative Commons license for you to print out. I printed my copy on cardstock and cut them out for students to rearrange into an algorithm that solves each challenge.
The current and any upcoming Teacher/Student guides and Challenge cards for the computer science projects inspired by literature will be shared throughout the year on Vermont CSTA website and Create Make Learn. If you are interested in trying these with your students, please reach out so we can collaborate.