Ixchell Reyes
The DIESOL podcast

Brent Warner
Developing Innovation in English as a Second or Other Language,

Ixchell Reyes
Episode 74 Holly Sawyer: Coding with ELLs.

Brent Warner
Welcome to DIESOL! This is episode 74. We are your hosts. I’m Brent Warner.

Ixchell Reyes
And I’m Ixchell Reyes… who’s no longer gonna be a supervisor in six business days.

Brent Warner
Yeah, you sound excited about swapping swapping your roles, Ixchell.

Ixchell Reyes
I’m ready. I’m ready to go back in the classroom.

Brent Warner
Well, it’s hard for us to talk about some of these things. Like, let’s do this and you’re all excited. Maybe like, oh, but I’m not teaching a class right now. So what do you do?

Ixchell Reyes
How have you been?

Brent Warner
I’ve been alright, I was up in the bay area last weekend and visiting my nephew. So that was fun. A little, a little time in Berkeley, a little time in San Francisco, a little time in Oakland. And so I got the spread. And prepping for Thanksgiving, I guess this week, too.

Ixchell Reyes
Well, I will be spending Thanksgiving I think I’m going to be going to New York. I don’t know. I’m not going home to family this year. Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know.

Brent Warner
Oh – it’s very soon – you don’t know if you’re going to New York or not?

Ixchell Reyes
Maybe driving? Not myself, but I don’t know. We’ll see if

Brent Warner
There’s a whole adventure going on here!

Ixchell Reyes
There’s an adventure. Yes.

Brent Warner
Drive safe because… Is there weather on the way to the East Coast?

Ixchell Reyes
I haven’t checked. I’m living and living the risk..

Brent Warner
(Laughter) You are not preparing to go to New York at all. All right, well, we’ll make the most of this. Speaking of nothing related, let’s let’s jump into things.

Ixchell Reyes
All right. Today we are going to be talking about coding with ELLs. And today’s special guest is Holly. Holly Sawyer first discovered her heart for learning language when she began learning Spanish as a teen in high school. She graduated with a bachelor’s in Spanish and then an MA in linguistics and asked herself where she would go from there. So and she realized that teaching ESL was the culmination of all those passions. She has taught adult ESL, early childhood and now has begun her fifth year at Oskar Smith High School at Chesapeake Public Schools. Those kids have her heart during pandemic teaching, she began to integrate coding into her instruction. And since then, has only continued to uncover reasons why coding should be an integral part of English language instruction. She wants to animate educators in the field, how coding is for all especially English learners, and that teaching coding can be for all especially multilingual teachers. And this is something that I was very much into a few years ago. And I’m happy to revisit it, because I think where I would have gotten with this topic is where she has delve even deeper. So welcome, Holly to the show.

Holly Sawyer
Thanks for having me. Appreciate your having me here.

Brent Warner
Oh, yeah. So Holly, I have to say, I was just scanning Twitter one day, and I came across one of your posts and one of your tweets that had like a YouTube video where you’re talking about doing the coding thing with your students, and I’m not sure what the context of the video is to tell the truth. But I was like, Oh, my God, this is so cool, right? Because you’re like, to kind of start things off, and you’re really going to have to share with us what all of this means. But it basically in the video, you were talking a little bit, it was a maybe a promotional video, saying like how you we’re using coding with your students to teach them English, to teach them coding to teach them critical thinking skills, like all of these different parts that are all coming together. And it’s it was just such a fascinating thing. So I shared that off with Ixchell right away. And I’m like, check this out. And she’s like,

Ixchell Reyes
I gotta have her on the show. And then she’s like, send

Brent Warner
me a message within two minutes of like, Let’s get her on and sort this out. So, so Holly, can you tell us a little bit? Well, let’s start with like, what is your concept when it when, you know a lot of times people are like coding that’s like hard science or that’s

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah or STEM, or not language learners that it’s or that’s too techie for me, is what I hear.

Brent Warner
Yeah. So what’s your approach to all this?

Holly Sawyer
Well, it’s also sort of odd that somebody like myself with a language background, and I’ve only ever taught English as a second language. How in the world does this even come about? Most EL teachers – our background is linguistics we love languages and perhaps literature, or English language arts. And so there are very, very few EL Teachers in general who do integrate coding it because we’re not, we’re not techie. We don’t like, or we’re not as inclined to math and the sciences perhaps. But it all came about really, when we were thrown in, we were in the pandemic. And I was doing hybrid teaching and how in the world was going to engage my students that were some with me, in person and others on the other side of the screen. And I happened to be scrolling crop scrolling across a Facebook group, myself and a teacher, an ELA teacher talked about how she had her students code, a tic tac dance, that had gone viral, and that through the coding, they learned movement and parts of the body. And I said, Oh, my gosh, this is it. This would be so much fun, I want to do this. And if I want to do it, then I know my students are gonna want to do it and be excited for it too. So I started looking at that point, well, how can I integrate some some coding into, into my lessons, and everybody led me initially to code.org, which is extremely friendly for those who have for integration before us teachers who have limited to no experience with coding. And that’s one thing that I want to tell the ESL teachers to is there that there is a lot of material and projects pre made for, for with coding projects. So there’s not a lot of like creation that necessarily has to be done on our end in order to support the students with the coding part. Now with the language. Yes. So I would front I would front a lot of our lessons with with language supports and some direct direct vocabulary instruction. And it went off from there. In those code.org modules. The students had such a blast, they learned all kinds of cross curricular vocabulary, we would see the language of science so like a lot of us ELA teachers know about the the weakest weta standards, the language of science, the language of mathematics of language arts and social studies, and social and instructional language well with their game design modules, Flappy Bird, the students learned they learned the elements of a story. So you have your character, you have to create your setting, there’s a problem, what leads up to the problem and how do we get our resolution? And so..

Brent Warner
Okay, there’s – you’re already talking in ways I’m like, Oh, I’ve never even would have imagined that existed. So there’s you even start with story storytelling elements there, but Flappy Bird. What’s the story behind Flappy Bird? Because it’s just to me, I was always like, frustrate yourself

Ixchell Reyes
can survive

Brent Warner
you know that feeling of like that frustration where you’re like, I’m not gonna make it through you know, so that’s that’s how I feel about Flappy Bird. No, there’s like story story elements too

Holly Sawyer
Sure. Like when they have the students in the modules, they get to select the different elements and then they get this on a drop down menu, they get to see all kinds of different options. So the, the, their Flappy Bird could be an underwater going through or seen. They, they could have their Flappy Bird character go faster or slower. And so that opens up to talking about

Brent Warner
comparatives and superlatives? Absolutely. That’s amazing. So okay, so use. So one, I mean, for me starting off, I’m just like, Okay, I’m laughing here, because you’re like, the barrier to entry is not the coding. It’s the English. Of course, right? Go figure. Talk a little bit more about what happens when you look into code, like, how did you structure it when you actually started looking at that and go and saying, Okay, well, what do I want to work with for my students? And how did you make your choices around what you are going to be coding or what you’re going to be sharing with your students?

Holly Sawyer
Well, I Well, one, one thing that I did look at well, it’s their curriculum is really structured with a series of puzzles and modules that the students work their way through. And then that at the end of the of the series, they’ll have sort of what would be like a culminating project. And so I would look at The modules and look at the language demands and then see how can I support the students in understanding this language before we go into coding and that follows actually a coding principle that first you would work with these concepts in an unplugged manner. So in a more real life in a real life unplugged manner, and then later, and in a second part, you would go into the coding and you would have them work through their series of tasks there.

Brent Warner
What do you mean by an unplugged man it like you mean? Like on paper, or, I mean,

Holly Sawyer
it can mean any variety of things. So, when I was for one project that I did with my students, it was simple directions like move forward, move, turn left, turn right with backwards. So for the unplugged portion, we discussed the vocabulary, and then I gave them a task to find an assign right directions for an assigned place in the school. And so the students they broke, we broke them up into groups of three, or four, and they had to say move forward, move forward, move forward, turn left, move forward, move forward. So they got also got to see, like the repetition that can be cumbersome and coding. But then when they were done with that, when they were done writing their, their directions, they had to hand their directions over to a different group, and the group had to follow them and hopefully, end up at the same place and then take a selfie. So that would have been that was the unplugged portion. Okay, okay. It’s almost like just a real real life we already are doing in ESL.

Brent Warner
Yeah, I was thinking I’ve done that activity, where I’ve rearranged desks in my class and built a little maze for the students to get through without tapping the the desks, as they’re walking through, like, one gets blindfolded. And another student says, like, hey, step four, turn left, you know, and turn more, you know, those types of things. So this is, this is turning that activity, that is the activity that’s just coding, though, that’s recognizing that an activity like that actually is coding.

Holly Sawyer
Exactly. And then from there, when we return, they already have interaction with the language. And with the concept of, of algorithms, or writing a list of directions, and how one wrong direction can totally throw up, throw off the algorithm it can. And then when they move into coding, and they’re coding their little character on the screen, they have that experience, and it helps them understand and it informs their coding experience.

Ixchell Reyes
Oh, Holly, you mentioned this activity. And it reminds me of a colleague that recently did something with again, we’re we’re teaching adult learners, my workplace, but they are part of their curriculum, as they have to be able to tell directions. So he uses programmable little car. And then they’ve got you know, he has a mat and they have to end up at the direction where he says, and I’m just thinking, Well, you just demystified what coding is because we’re already doing that and whatever shape or form and I know that in your, in your blog, you talk about block coding, and I was hoping you could talk a little bit about how block coding is related to chunking in terms of language approach. Sure,

Brent Warner
first, describe what block coding is for guessing.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, you must decide that one too.

Holly Sawyer
There’s, there’s different coding languages that are out there. And most of them are going to be more complex than what we would probably start out we would a beginner would start off with. And my goal is to introduce coding to my students. As an introduction, I don’t want it to be a book a complete nother language necessarily that they have to learn what most what most technology platforms start students off with is this thing called Block blocks. I can’t even say block based coding. And so it simply uses different colored blocks with the grouping of words there. So one group might say, move forward. And then another to use that same example. Another block might say turn left, blank degrees. And so to me it well to me and a lot of the research shows as well and I’ve seen the benefit of this is that the the what That’s how we learn language, we learn languages, and in phrases and collocations, we’d have groups of words that we learned together, we don’t learn them in isolation, like word word. Right, since that we learn language. And so coding naturally taps into that for our students, and it presents these groups of words together, and that are that are color coded on top of it. And it’s tremendous support.

Brent Warner
So how do your students for the first time because I mean, you’re talking about basically doing a high flex setup, right? You had some students in person and some students at home to start? How did your students one? I mean, that’s amazing to make that effort. So congratulations there, but to how did your students respond to it? Right, like that’s a, you know, some of them are behind the screen kind of working by themselves, and some of them are in the room with you, how did you make that work for them?

Holly Sawyer
That was really tough, to be honest. And it was so clear that the benefits of in person instruction, when the they would come across an area where they need clarification, I could immediately look on their screen and say, Oh, well, let’s try this, or what do you think here with this, whereas the students on the other side of the screen, they had their I couldn’t intuitively see on their faces, that they’re getting frustrated, or that they, when they made, they had to ask for help, they had to visit, CLI asked for help pause the and raise their hand on the other side of the screen. And so it wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t great. I was super thrilled to have them all back in person when it when the time came. But it’s also like it to me it made it clear that having somebody beside you can be extremely beneficial and working out problems. Yeah. Also learning computer sciences, peer programming, that’s actually a strategy they want. And to me, I’m like, ooh, that’s interactive, isn’t it, to have somebody two students working side by side together to figure out a problem.

Brent Warner
I love that. And I mean, this is something big, big time that I found too, is like, how much time I spent trying to explain something fairly simple. Online, right, versus when I’m sitting next to the student, it’s like, a six second, you know, like, little quick thing. And then I’ve literally had some things that I could do in 30 seconds, and then 20 minutes trying to explain it through through online. So. So that’s a big challenge. But it’s also it’s a great learning opportunity, right for you. And for them. I guess that frustration might be visible when their camera just suddenly goes off and they log out or, or throw the throw their computer across the room. Right. But so here, then you’ve got these students. And you’re you’re going into, I mean, if you can explain this a little bit, because to me, I don’t know, I was talking to a show it kind of before you logged in about I would love to do stuff like this, I would love to explore some things like this, but I’m not sure that it fits into my curriculum, right? Like I’m teaching. I’m teaching a writing class, and I’m teaching a conversation class. Right. And, and I, and I have, you know, plans and things that we have to go through? Are you sliding them in as activities? Are you building them? Like, is it a core part of the curriculum throughout the whole semester? Is it a coding class that has ESL supporters of an ESL class that is, functioned on coding, you know, like, because I think people are gonna want like, there might be people listening, going, I’m not able to do this for whatever XYZ reason, and I’d love to hear how your entire how your overall setup is going.

Holly Sawyer
Sure, um, the way that my class works is it’s an English language development class. So it’s not coding a coding class, or an intro to robotics or any of that. We do have that at my high school. But this is essentially an English language development class. And I’m unlucky in that there’s a lot of freedom given to us in order to identify what would be best for our students at this time in terms of language development. But when I integrate, my goal is to integrate one coding project to semester. Okay. So that’s really how it how it plays out now that firt very first semester when we were virtual, and I spent the whole semester on code.org. But then when we returned, I had I had applied for a robe a grant Little Car Robots, because I wanted them to be able to touch, you know, and see physically the result of the code that they wrote online. And so I did a unit within the larger semester of robotics and intro to coding. Okay. And then also, I did one and a different one a little. The following semester, and then this semester, I did and animate your name. Project with CS First for Google, which was tied into a names and identity unit.

Brent Warner
Oh, you got it. You got to walk us through that.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, that sounds amazing. Because now I mean, I have all these other questions about projects you have, but please, please talk about that.

Holly Sawyer
Well, what the names and identity unit we read, Sandra Cisneros, mine my name me number, a vignette, which is part of how some mango street and they from there, they went into a, they presented on how their name is significant to them, and what symbols would represent their name, and what memories are associated with their name, and that are truly a part of who they are, and their identity. And so from there, after we went through that large portion of the unit, which was about two, three weeks. From there, we went into Oh, now let’s animate our name. Let’s extend that into a creative expression of how we can make our make our name and animation feature.

Ixchell Reyes
That is, this was like,

Holly Sawyer
it was a great project. So with the when when we went into the coding section that took like another two weeks, and we took one lesson for each letter. So I took it slow, I have newcomers, I have students who just arrived a day or two prior. And so I didn’t, we didn’t, I didn’t want to push them too fast and too far. We would look at, for example, with for one day, going back to comparatives, we would look how we can make the letter grow larger, and then make the letter grow smaller. So we talked about how it was larger than before. And now it’s smaller than before. And so they got exposed to that language of size. And comparatives, as well as some math, because they had to place the letter on the grid. And they we were able to talk about the x axis and the Y axis and how when we move when we increase the number, the letter moves up, and when we decrease, decrease the number that letter will shrink down.

Ixchell Reyes
I love how just the project like that touches on so many other areas that sometimes yield stones aren’t getting the time for I think it’s you know, you’ve got art, you’ve got culture, you’ve got Math, you’ve got, obviously the stem portion of it. But then language and I know in your blog, you you talk, it feels like you’re talking as I’m reading it, it’s it reads to me like the teacher who doesn’t yet who wants to take the risk and try some of this, but they’re afraid to take the risk. And you talk about how a robot doesn’t get to a place. By itself, you’ve got to do repetitive motions and try again and try again. And that’s just the same thing we do with language we have students repeat, and just the fact that you’re repeating that over and over, is giving students time to practice language. You have here, one of in your blog, which we’ll link in the show notes you have sort of like this grid with it’s a kind of like a what out what you mentioned might be an unplugged activity where you’ve got items on the grid, and you might have someone give directions to different icons. And so I think that so from from this kind of material, you said that after you went to you use code.org. And then you delve into a little bit more if someone were already doing something like this, what’s another step further to maybe personalize the materials or I imagine that as you found more that you decided to personalize it for the areas that you wanted to focus on.

Holly Sawyer
Sure thing. I’m still I’m still new at all of this myself. And so that’s my goal to try a different coding platform every semester or your focus. And so that’s one reason why I went with ces first for Google this this semester. And what’s the question again? I’m sorry, you So

Ixchell Reyes
what kind of what other resources? Are you finding? So you’ve you’ve, you’re the teacher that has made this stuff that has taken the plunge that is loving it and finding out results, but it’s still exploring. So what’s next? What, what, after code.org? What other things can you do to personalize?

Holly Sawyer
I think the one thing that I would tell an ELL teachers that there’s a lot of money and district for coding and robotics, and a lot of districts in their computer science department would already have something like, like the little Edison robots. So it might be if they are interested in moving from a code that or a project to the Edison robots, they could reach out to their, to their district, to see if they could get put in contact with some of their computer science teachers to see if they have those materials for them. I really enjoyed the Edison robot, and so did my students, because then they could, after they wrote the code, they would upload the code to their robot, and then they would let it go and see if the code works like they had initially thought. So robotics is fun. And I highly recommend the Edison robots. And that is also another side note, like you can integrate parts of the city too. And so I had them on large poster paper, they created their own city. And then they had to get their cart make their car move from this, the this part of the city to the parking lot without jumping over the duck jumping over the road, and knocking out a pedestrian. So they were trying and creating their own cities, we were able to talk about what what buildings are in a city, and they just had a grand time with that. And then I was able to see truly and what artists some of my students are. They’re creating beautiful, gorgeous cities. Students, like I said, who had just been with us for a couple of months. And once that reflected their homes, plazas, you know, in the center, beautiful, gorgeous cathedrals that they would show me the original pictures of from back in Guatemala. And so that’s those are some ways that they can personalize this idea of coatings, it seems on the surface that it would not be personalizable. But

Brent Warner
let’s clarify a little bit just to make sure. So anyone listening, the Edison robots that you’re talking about? Can you describe what they actually are like, what are they physically because they are their car robots? Kind of right?

Holly Sawyer
Yeah, the car robots and you can put Legos on them too. And there may be like this size of a little bit smaller than a cell phone. And the actor did. They’re just grand. So I’m thinking they have some pre loaded programs that you can put on put with them immediately. And so that was a way for my students to see like, oh, this could be really fun. So they have that introduces them to barcode programming, you know, we all know barcodes, we go to Kroger, and we scan the barcodes well, it showed them that the the barcode, they would have upload that that to the robot could upload an entire program, which was different from coding where you’re listing out all of the steps and creating the program. So that was a different expression of, of coding. That’s so that’s fun. And then see, as far as for Google is pretty accessible for students. One thing I like about with them is that they have a lot of video tutorials that you can download, so I would download their video tutorials. And I would embed Allah like EdPuzzle or Nearpod embed some comprehension questions. And that would be our listening portion of the of the lesson is looking at the tutorials. There’s ways to integrate the other domains as well like with speaking, when one thing that we it’s constant in coding is coming up against problems. Like one little one little error can throw off the whole algorithm and it can be frustrating. And so we co created together my students and I have problem solving phrases, right? What do you say in Spanish when you have a problem like and then we would translate it into English and so they had this list of problem solving questions, and then problem and problem answering stems. And so the He knew that if they had, if they were going to ask for help, they had to, they had to ask using the guide, which we had created together. So that was that that was a big support in terms of the speaking aspect of coding.

Ixchell Reyes
So I’m already thinking, Brent. So in my, in my workplace, I get students, maybe for one week, there’s intake, and there could be three weeks, two weeks, one week, but I can already see how I could do like the thing at the end of the week that they get to do and they would be either practicing with blocks to code, but I can see I could probably try to incorporate some of these, which I think that’s the challenge in my in my particular workplace.

Brent Warner
Yeah, I’m thinking I’m thinking about that, Tim, I’m thinking right

Ixchell Reyes
now, like, oh, how can I get this in there? How can I get this in there? Because we’re a very fast paced intake and graduate and then, but it can be done. I know, it can be done. Yeah.

Brent Warner
Yeah, I think there’s a lot of parts here that are super interesting. And Holly, I mean, there’s so many ways we can go with this conversation. But but one of the one of the things I wanted to kind of talk to you about because I think that it’s important to kind of recognize, you know, we can decipher it and pull it out from from, you know, some of your example lessons and the things that you’ve been talking about, but you also on your blog, you have a pretty direct thing that, you know, like infographic about why why should we teach coding to IELs? Do you mind if I just kind of give the little titles that you give? And then you could kind of speak on those for a minute? Yes. So let’s start with you start with the first one is a skill. All right. So the very first one is just skill. What do you mean by by skill and why we should teach it?

Holly Sawyer
Well, there’s going to be a lot of job opportunities. And there’s a and the future and the very near future. There’s there’s job opportunities now as they exist with that are going to demand to have coding as an as a background. And so I mean, it exposes our students to those kinds of the to two coding and two skills that they will need. One of them could even be to have a tolerance for problem solving. That could be a skill that they need to that they need to work on,

Ixchell Reyes
like persistence, persistence, persistence, persistence, persistence, and then frustration, right. I’m thinking about that right now.

Holly Sawyer
As the goal isn’t necessarily for all of my students to leave with, you know, in and enter into the computer science field, that’s not going to be the goal, the goal is for them to, in the end become better versions of themselves. And so by practicing in these little micro opportunities, with coding, how they can build up their capacity for engaging with problems, how they can develop persistence and resilience with a new skill that in itself, in and of itself, is what I’m going forward.

Ixchell Reyes
Excellent. So the next block in your infographic is building equity. So how is coding related to that?

Holly Sawyer
Well has historically it hasn’t been as available to students without without the money and opportunity. I think that’s starting to change as, as we’re seeing large tech companies reach out to support nonprofits like code Virginia, and to provide that education. But this is the real cool part is that they all have us as teachers, and so we can be the front mind the first very first experience that they have in coding. And I think that’s a tremendous way to open up pathways for students.

Brent Warner
Nice. The southern next one is you’re talking about project based learning.

Holly Sawyer
Yes, I especially in my district, right now, they’re looking towards moving away from traditional exam assessments, multiple choice and into more project based learning and that is coding. You’re creating a product and and you’re following the steps throughout, and they are super proud of the product that they create. So it’s a wonderful way to assess them without giving them you know, you know, matching or multiple choice and those kinds of those kinds of form.

Brent Warner
That’s awesome that your district is doing. Because not everybody gets it, right. People have to kind of sneak it in in some ways.

Ixchell Reyes
You also talk about how it’s for all. What do you mean by that?

Holly Sawyer
So this, there is a movement that coding can be for all coding is for all it’s not just for, you know, the Google execs. They’re just something that all students can and should do. But and I 100% agree with that. But because of the reasons that we have discussed, even just tonight, it is especially for multilingual learners, especially for English language learners, because of the poll. I mean, it’s endless, and I’m continuing to uncover it, right. But like what I mentioned, with the black base coding it, it’s already tapping into a process that they’re experiencing with language learning. Right? How are we learning language? We’re learning to it in groups and word groups and in phrases? It’s also we all know that the bilingual brain functions differently? Well, they don’t call it a coding languages for nothing. And so it also taps into their, the natural that their natural, how to express that their connections truly, that they’re making, when they’re learning another language. And when they’re also learning something that’s language G.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah. Because you’re, you’re decoding oftentimes, and you’re trying to figure out where the pieces fit together, I could totally see that.

Holly Sawyer
Another thing that’s amazing with coding is that when, when they’re writing out an algorithm, and early coding, like what I was mentioning, before, move forward, move forward, move forward, move forward, move forward, move forward, move forward. They, they start to recognize that there’s a pattern here and this, why are we saying this so many times, there’s got to be a way we can do that that’s more efficient, and better. And so then you introduce a concept of loops. Well, what is a loop? Well, let’s put move forward and a loop and then put time seven. And so they’re also getting exposure to those basic mathematical concepts that, oh, we use multiplication, to reduce problems, and to make life more efficient

Ixchell Reyes
by reducing redundancy. Also, I get started seeing Oh,

Brent Warner
yeah. I’m already getting into like,

Ixchell Reyes
I’m getting ideas like, oh, man, I gotta try this.

Brent Warner
Alright, so the next step, and this one is particularly interesting to me is cross curricular discipline.

Holly Sawyer
Yes, coding, and computer science, it naturally lends itself to integration across the disciplines. That social and emotional language, dealing with frustration, persistence, problem solving. It’s very rich language heavy with that, when I mentioned with the language of language arts, where a student can go into story elements with with game design, and then the language of science, for example, in one of the code.org modules, we talked about natural and natural resources, looking at their Minecraft modules, right, and so that was that inputted content vocabulary, but and then they got to extend into the gamifying. And so there’s an it continues to continues like art, art is coding is very, very art, artsy. It’s not that another expression there, but talking about symmetry and how we can create a beautiful, beautiful symmetrical pieces by using art going into math and talking about, we need the character to move us X number of degrees. And so this, the student will have to increase or decrease it based off of what they see happening there. So it’s extremely cross curricular, and that’s what we teach, we should well, especially in my course, and in my school, we are an English language development. We dip a little bit into the different content objectives.

Ixchell Reyes
So you mentioned already a little bit about in block based programming, you mentioned the similarities to language but what other areas is coding similar to you know what we’re, I mean, it’s a language.

Holly Sawyer
Well, one is that you it is about code. Communication. So it is a human and with a machine. Now with natural language, we have a human interacting with another human. And so one benefit of teaching coding is that it removes that second human. And they get to practice without all of the background, the noise, the experiences, and the judgment, even that may, they may be concerned about with the other human. So it lowers their affective filter, and they get to see immediately what they’re communicating if their communication was successful, or if they needed to try again. And so it’s a it’s an brings about this element of communication. And it’s still it by removing that second human, it gives them practice with a similar concept.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, yeah, I can totally see like taking the risk of having to give directions, one of the tasks my students have to do is that they have this interview, it’s a high stakes interview, they’ve got to be able to give directions to a place. And you know, sometimes they’ll they’ll want to memorize, but then the person interviewing them knows that they are giving you this memorized language, because it’s not natural, but removing that fear of and feeling confident. I think that coding coding does that for them. It sounds like to me, you know,

Holly Sawyer
right, they are going to use language with another person they are, but then it gives them sort of a break. Yes.

Brent Warner
Well, what I’m what I was thinking, as you’re explaining, this, too, is like, I feel guilty, sometimes talking to my students, because I understand what they’re saying so well, and other Americans might not, right, because I’m so used to dealing with language learners, right. And so like, like, they’ll say something, and it’s like, a half a broken sentence. And I’ll be able, I’ll be like, Yeah, let’s do this. Like, and it’s not really fair in certain ways, because they’re getting the benefit of your ear. Yeah, my humaneness being able to interpret what they mean. And then, and then they don’t necessarily build the accurate. I mean, obviously, as a teacher, you know, I’m responding to this, but like in certain side conversations and things, they’re not benefiting from the accuracy, that would get lost in coding, or sorry, it would be accurately done in coding, but it would be lost inside of the communication between two humans, right? And so I might say, Hey, I totally get what you’re saying. And I always get an A give the example I say, but if you go to Starbucks, and you’re talking to, you know, your average American who maybe doesn’t spend a lot of time dealing with

Ixchell Reyes
or doesn’t speak other languages, other languages, or language learners, or any of

Brent Warner
those things, they can sometimes be quite rigid in their understanding of things, right. And that is also, you know, it gives students a chance, I would think through through doing this to say like, okay, my language, my coding language, but my English language through the coding language is going to either get the response I’m looking for, or it’s not. And that value of accuracy, you know, can be a really powerful link lesson for the students as well. Last one here is that it teaches how to think

Holly Sawyer
this is one of my favorite ones. So that’s why I delved in get that for last. And I delved into that. So So one of the first lessons that I taught was, the code.org have this video of Steve Jobs saying that everybody in this country, and I’m thinking, Oh, I already like this, everybody in this country, okay. Everybody in this country should learn computer science, because it teaches you how to think, and I was sort of thrown back for a sec, I said, Wait a second, I know how to think, What do you mean, I need to learn how to think and what does this mean? And so but very soon, I was able to unpack what that meant, as I was interacting with my students, but also there’s this whole there’s a whole field of what kind of thinking is required in computer science, and what kind of thinking is required of programmers. And it’s known as computational thinking, or what does that even mean? I mean, it can mean having, having that growth mindset that we’re going to continue, even though it’s not accurate, it’s not accurate yet. It’s the what you mentioned earlier brand about precision, and how the necessity of precision encoding and an algorithm and then also this idea of algorithmic thinking or directions, right, what comes first, then what comes next, and then what comes next. And thinking truly carefully about all of The minute directions that are required in order to get a computer to do what you want, it can be quite tough. I mean, a lot of people when they do, how to videos, they often think of the like how to make a peanut butter sandwich or peanut butter jelly sandwich, right. And so they have the bread, they have the, they have the jelly, and then they have, first you get the knife, then you lift the knife up, then you dip the knife into the peanut butter, then you turn it and they have to think, okay, if I’m going to be explaining this to an alien from Mars, how would I write out all of the steps without it being a total chaos. And so it makes students start to think along details, the details that are required when they express themselves. And so that’s one way that it teaches them how to think to

Ixchell Reyes
that is really cool. Again, I am going back to the classroom students. So I am promising to our audience here that I’m going to try something because it’s a challenge. And I love a challenge. We are going to link all of your resources in the show notes, you’ve got the blog, I encourage our listeners to check it out. It is very encouraging to hear from a teacher who’s taking the risk and is finding and is discovering really, there’s also a Padlet that you’ve put together with all of your resources that you to point teachers and what to do. So we’ll have those in the show notes.

Brent Warner
And one of my favorite things here. But as we’re, as we’re wrapping out of this section, Holly is hopefully an inspiration to other teachers who are listening because I love talking to people who are still kind of in the thick of figuring things out, right? And like, that part is important to kind of say like, Hey, you know, because if people wouldn’t you talk to when you talk to you know about these different ideas. It’s like, oh, well, I can’t do that. Like it’s, it’s, it’s hard, or, you know, it’s that person’s been doing it for years and years and years. And so they they’ve been they’ve been able to build it all out. But I can’t really do that. And so I really appreciate that you’re new to this and or you know, relatively new and sharing it and trying to figure that out. I think that’s really important and impressive. And so thank you for sharing all of these things.

Holly Sawyer
It’s my pleasure. I like to look, I see it as learning beside my students. If they come up with some with an issue and their algorithm and I don’t understand them. Then it brings about the opportunity to talk about like, well, let’s figure this out together.

Brent Warner
I love it. Awesome. Okay, we’re gonna wrap out here and jump over to fund funds.

Ixchell Reyes
Oh, right. It is time for our fun finds. And I guess by now maybe people have heard of this. But my fun find recently is Mastodon Twitter, the Twitter

Brent Warner
coding, you have to have talked about this last time you have to have like a mastodon,

Ixchell Reyes
but but I’m finding over the the previous. Yeah, the last week because we talked about this about a week or so ago. I’ve been finding more of my teacher, people signing up. And so it’s like rediscovering microblogging. And again, it’s maybe Twitter isn’t forever, maybe there is something after Twitter, and maybe there’s something in conjunction to Twitter. So I’ve found a bunch of the big names out there. And so I’m looking forward to seeing just exploring how I explore this new tool. So I’m over at mastodon. I’ll put my handle that is super long in the show notes.

Brent Warner
I’m on there too. So we’ll add mine as well.

Brent Warner
I just haven’t been active yet.

Brent Warner
So come follow me or find me and I’ll follow you back and we’ll figure it out kind of together. That’s the theme of the show. Let’s figure it all out together. Okay, so mine Um, well, as I mentioned, I was up in the bay area it’s a food’s expensive up there, but I’m going to just talk about a restaurant anyways. We we went to a bunch of different restaurants and things but one that we went to was I don’t even remember the name of it, but the chicken was it was called Vons chicken like Vons – same as the supermarket but Korean Korean fried chicken. Oh man. It was outstanding.

Ixchell Reyes
I love Korean fried chicken

Brent Warner
Korean fried chicken is so I mean I love I love the Japanese fried chicken too but like the Korean fried chicken with that double fry and that extra crispiness and then that tangy, that tangy sauce that they put on top of it. So anyways if you’re up in the bay area if you’re is actually in Oakland that we went to when the chicken I don’t remember the name of the place but the chicken was great and

Ixchell Reyes
Oh, Brent!

Brent Warner
I’ll put it in the show notes! I’ll fight I’ll go Google search it. Figure it out. But But anyways, wherever you are, go find some good Korean fried chicken it will make your evening if you’re able to eat chicken (laughter).

Ixchell Reyes
Holly, You’ve got a fun find for us too.

Holly Sawyer
Yes, I’m making my way from Richmond down back down to Virginia Beach. There’s this beautiful. There’s this beautiful road known as route five. And on this road, it’s been pretty much untouched for hundreds of years, and there’s historic homes, there’s restaurants and beautiful bike paths. And you get a touch of a virginia – early Virginia history when you drive on down and so that’s a lot a lot more preferable than hopping on the interstate. I think I think it might be worth the extra few minutes and I think that all Virginians need to make that a regular destination

Ixchell Reyes
Pick the scenic route route five

Ixchell Reyes
All right. If you are on any of the social media platforms and you’re giving us a shout out, just tag us if you’re trying out any of what you’ve learned in any of our episodes, let us know we want to know what you’re doing how you’re doing it if you have questions tag us we are we’re constantly checking

Brent Warner
how do they tag us on Mastodon tagging in there

Ixchell Reyes
we don’t have these DIESOL will eventually DIESOLpod will have a mastodon okay? But you can find Brent and I yeah, I mean, I mean that clubhouse and tiktok so why not?

Brent Warner
Might as well. Awesome. Of course we do have a patreon if you want to support the show in any way. No obligation of course. So we just love it that you’re listening but if you want to support the we do have Patreon you can find it on the website. And of course you can find the show notes for this episode, including links to Holly’s blog, Padlet all the other things that you’ve been putting together Twitter and everything. Everything is at DIESOL.org/74 That’s the number seven four and of course you can listen to us at voiceEd Canada. That’s voiced.ca. Still on Twitter, as long as things haven’t completely blown up, I guess so the show is at @DIESOLpod I am at @BrentGWarner

Ixchell Reyes
at @Ixy_Pixy, that’s i x y underscore p i x y and you can find Holly

Unknown Speaker
at @HollySawyerESL.

Brent Warner
Awesome. And Holly Are there any other places that you want people to find you or is that is that the best for now?

Unknown Speaker
That’s probably it for now. I’m just starting so now I’m looking at to look into all of these other places that you guys are (laughter)

Brent Warner
So we’ve all overwhelmed each other tonight (laughter)

Unknown Speaker
In Spanish, thank you is Gracias, gracias for tuning in to the podcast.

Brent Warner
Thanks everybody.

Ixchell Reyes
See you