One challenge with the new digital technologies curriculum is supporting teachers to introduce the concepts and find meaningful ways to integrate the content so that it doesn’t become a stand alone subject. How many times have you heard? Where am I going to find time to teach digital technologies?
Do we teach literacy everyday? Well, here is the first must have book for your school to seamlessly introduce coding concepts whilst being immersed in quality literature.
If I Were A Wizard
Written by leading Queensland teacher Paul Hamilton and superbly illustrated by Simon Howe, we follow Hazel (a mouse) as she shares her dreams of becoming a wizard. The first part of the book is the story itself which could be used for a whole range of literacy foci just as any traditional picture story book would. The second half of the book revisits certain encounters Hazel has and draws out the coding concepts: repeats and loops, sequence and order, algorithms, variables, conditionals, functions, debugging and patterns. If we want our students to see coding concepts as so much more than Scratch or Beebots, then this book makes those “text to self” and “text to world” links seamlessly.
As many teachers I work with find some of these concepts challenging, the book also serves as a perfect teacher PD. Why not run a staff meeting where you unpack the book and help your teachers demystify the language of computational thinking?
Accompanying the book is super useful website (www.wizardcodingbook.com) with a whole range of resources, from printable posters to lesson plans and even an AR app. If I Were a Wizard is available on Amazon (hardcover $24)
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