The Literacies of Writing Code: A Middle School Workshop Model

• In Event: Computational Thinking, Languages, and Literacies

Abstract

Purpose: This study investigates the potential to introduce key writing composition and programming concepts to middle school children using the model of the writer’s workshop (Calkins, 1994). We describe how students drafted, revised, and published their own digital stories using the introductory programming language Scratch and in the process learned fundamental computer science (CS) concepts as well as the wider connection between programming and writing as interrelated processes of composition.

Perspectives: Programming, not long ago considered an erudite technical skill, is now widely promoted as a fundamental 21st century literacy for all children, with steep implications in terms of equity of access and quality instruction (Author et al., 2020; Burke, 2016; Margolis, Goode, & Ryoo, 2015). To date, all 50 states have committed to CS education through policies that span the implementation of standards, educator certification, and course offering requirements (Code.org, 2021). Largely and notably missing from such policies has been the consideration of specific pedagogies for introducing computing to children at earlier ages. Building upon previous research teaching programming in terms of storytelling (Kelleher & Pausch, 2005 & 2007), this paper introduces the writer’s workshop model (Calkins, 1994) as a means to facilitate a particular process by which youth can learn programming and explores the parallels between coding and writing as creative and collaborative processes.

Methods: The study is based on a seven-week ELA pilot elective course using Scratch at an urban public middle school located in West Philadelphia. All classes with a modest 11 students were aligned to Pennsylvania state standards in Reading, Writing, and Listening on the 8th grade level and supported by the school’s junior-high literacy instructor.

Data Sources: Over the ELA workshop, we collected a variety of data sources, including student pre/post surveys, weekly field note observations, artifact analysis of all student final digital story submissions in Scratch, and post-workshop interviews with select students.

Results: Over the course of the workshop, middle school students learned both the fundamentals of programming and storytelling, and this is charted in terms of the products (digital stories) they programmed, the processes (debugging and revising) they utilized, and their overall perceptions of coding as a form of composition and the overall workshop model at its close. Table 2 below outlines the interrelation of these three outcomes.

Scholarly Significance: While the bulk of introductory K-12 computing efforts has centered upon STEM integration, such singular focus has neglected to examine the pedagogical affordances and broader student reach characteristic of literacy integration. This work using the writing workshop model for students’ learning to code supports the promise of ELA integration on the middle school level and underscores the wider connection between coding and writing as interrelated processes of composition.

Authors

• Quinn Burke, Digital Promise

• Yasmin B. Kafai, University of Pennsylvania