Computer Science & Making Inspired by Literature - Red Clover Books

Each year, Vermont librarians nominate 10 picture books for children grades K through 4 to read  and vote for their favorites. This year's Red Clover Book inspired me to consider how we might make a connection between computer science and literacy.  You can learn more about the Red Clover Book awards through the Department of Libraries an the Red Clover Award Website.

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

facilitated. 

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  Anna McGregor. 

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. 

If you'd like a version with just the Who's Afraid of the Light Challenge Cards you can find it at https://bit.ly/red-clover-cs-cards-WAOT 

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. 

Next steps for me are to coach a group of students and their teacher as they 'kid test' the challenge cards.   Please contact me, if you'd like to collaborate on this next phase. I'm also taking suggestion as to which teacher/student guide I should take on next! If you see one of the  computer science ideas  inspired by the Red Clover book  that you'd like to try, let me know.  Let's see where the interest lies for the next  Red Clover  inspired Compuer Science teacher/sudent guide. 

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 on the Create Make Learn blog.  If you are interested in trying these with your students, please reach out so  we can collaborate.