Book Review: Hello Ruby-Adventures in Coding

Book Review: Hello Ruby-Adventures in Coding

Linda Liukas

New York: Feiwel and Friends, 2015

Can be used with printable and playable features of www.helloruby.com

The author and publisher are pushing this as an early childhood, family 21^st century coding book, but it truly is also extremely infusible into any k-3 literacy program enabling STEM learning and the ABC’s of programming.

Why I, a literacy educator, chose it:  The cover,  with its fierce looking Ruby and computer icon, dares the reader to accompany her on her adventures in coding.  Most literacy educators and family storytellers are ever so familiar with the key elements of the adventure quest.  These books offer the reader a hero, perhaps more than one, plus a challenge.  The hero makes a plan to surmount the challenge in order to complete a quest and achieve a goal or get a treasure.  Along the way the hero often has to come up with new strategies, overcome unexpected obstacles, and learn new skills or information. 

In this book, all of these storytelling components are expertly tapped by programmer, illustrator, and author, Linda Liukas, in service of engaging young learners, their families,  and (this reviewer hopes) early childhood educators. To that end she offers immediately engaging, childhood relevant, games, paper dolls, secret language experiences, and more that render real key programming and coding terms for young learners.

The author believes play is at the core of learning. . . and that the fundamentals of computational thinking  include: break[ing] big problems into small ones, look[ing] for patterns, creat[ing] step by step plans and being creative.  That sounds like a tall STEM and programming order for a child age 4-8. But the intrepid Ruby befriends penguins, robots, foxes, a snow leopard and Django with his pet python, as part of her quest to find five gems.  Her adventure translates real life and whimsical child adventures into real 21^st century child-oriented activities. These include constructing game boards, creating patterns, developing a programming keyboard, paper doll clothes, and tools on the site that can be used interactively.

This work can function as a standalone captivating storybook that makes key coding terms such as strings, numbers, booleons, and algorithms come alive. Additionally, It offers much as an interactive, early childhood website with printable, customized to child, products.  It uses the adventure plot and child heroes to translate complex coding terms into relatable aspects of the everyday lives of children and the adults who teach them.  After the story of Ruby’s adventure to identify the sources of various gems, the second part of this book includes activities that dip into the everyday lives of young readers as they authenticate abstract coding glossary STEM  vocabulary. 

For example, the young audience for this story of peer adventurers in coding, can: sequence everyday play or school activities, deconstruct a drawing or picture created or chosen by the audience, can print out Ruby paper dolls from the site in appropriate dress for a special event using pattern recognition, can string print and design a personal keyboard using the site, can draw a map of the route from home to school or to a favorite place using algorithms and sequence, or best of all for many in its audience, use data structures to create a secret code language. 

Beyond the activities, the plot and the optimistic “I can do it” characters of Ruby and Django empathize resilience in terms of finding and trying multiple plans or constructs to overcome obstacles that prevent them from immediately attaining their goals.  Ruby knows that solving big problems like finding gems requires mapping carefully, reading instructions, and breaking down big problems into tiny problems stuck together.

Plan making is a part of Ruby’s and Django’s approach to life and Django eagerly helps Ruby when her first plan does not work .  Ruby realizes that learning the penguins’ language will help her find her gems. Ruby knows how to loop a ladder by building one step and going over it five times.  Ruby learns how to give clear instructions to the foxes so they can get their planting done.  Of course, beyond these aptitudes and coding language for success competencies, these coding precepts can also serve as literacy and life lessons for success in a variety of relationship, community, family and collaboration successes.

How this work can be used:  The beautifully illustrated maps and games grounded in Ruby and Django’s adventures can be copied from the book with the accessible, early childhood traditional materials clearly listed. The hints icons on the activity pages invite the child audience and family, teachers and others to find the coding realities of their own lives, home environments, and schools.  Algorithms, functions and abstractions about baking, coloring, dress, music, and climbing suddenly translate into child-centered reality.  The work is laid out in chapters with engaging and recognizable, child friendly characters embodying the glossary words for the teacher, parent, or others in the back of the print work.  Unlike many child-centered, informational books that teach coding on an appropriate level, but using precise templates, both this book and web resource encourage the audience to use blank templates and develop their own game boards or models for this very open project.

Since coding is a key literacy 21^st century language, teaching it should not be the province of only educators explicitly trained in coding or STEM for early childhood. Nor should parents and storytellers be excluded from integrating this language and its coding for life success lessons of resiliency, problem solving, and collaboration into their rich interaction with learners.  All early childhood learners and literacy learning adults can join Ruby and Django in these ongoing adventures to infuse coding for life lessons into their flowering, multi-content learning.

Dr. Rose Reissman is the founder of the Writing Institute, now replicated in 145 schools including the Manchester Charter Middle School in Pittsburgh. She is a featured author in New York State Union Teachers Educators Voice 2016 and was filmed discussing ESL student leadership literary strategies developed at Ditmas IS 62, a Brooklyn public intermediate school. roshchaya@gmail.com

(Review) Project Based Literacy: Fun Literacy Projects for Powerful Common Core Learning

Project Based Literacy is an approach of high interest to the Literacy PLN. 

“Overall, this book is a fantastic guide for the teacher wanting to engage their students in real-world, authentic learning.”

“Easing the struggle of implementation, Gura and Reissman provide a practical guide for teachers to not only get their feet wet, but also dive into PBL with a specific focus on literacy... Additionally, they make the case that PBL is an essential part of the literacy classroom, as it reaches cross-curricular goals of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).”

“This book makes a meaningful contribution to teacher/practitioner literature. It is organized to first motivate teachers to consider a new approach to standards-based teaching, and the authors provide strong rationale for incorporating viable and authentic projects into the literacy classroom. Twenty easy-to-follow guides assist teachers with starting their journey to PBL activities.”

Cite This Article as: Teachers College Record
Date Published: May 22, 2017
http://www.tcrecord.org  / http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID=21986
ID Number: 21986, Date Accessed: 7/10/2017 7:00:15 PM

Project Based Literacy:
Fun Literacy Projects for Powerful Common Core Learning
reviewed by Jason Trumble — May 22, 2017

Title: Project Based Literacy: Fun Literacy Projects for Powerful Common Core Learning
Author(s): Mark Gura, Rose Reissman
Publisher: Information Age Publishing, Charlotte
ISBN: 1681232928, Pages: 214, Year: 2015
Search for book at Amazon.com

or from its publisher @ http://www.infoagepub.com/products/Project-Based-Literacy

As I work with preservice and in-service teachers, I challenge them to consider how their teaching and curriculum engages students in authentic ways while also increasing their digital age competencies. We explore how real world, digital age learning must include communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity. Project based learning (PBL) exemplifies these skills and promotes real-world learning for students of all ages, but it is difficult to do, and do well. Easing the struggle of implementation, Gura and Reissman provide a practical guide for teachers to not only get their feet wet, but also dive into PBL with a specific focus on literacy.

Project based literacy: Fun literacy projects for powerful common core learning begins with an explanation and rationale for incorporating PBL with literacy, and then the authors provide practical tips for teachers, followed by twenty detailed projects. Finally, they wrap up the book with tips for incorporating technology into PBL. This logical progress allows the reader to develop a conceptual understanding of the concept and contextualize the pedagogy before putting it into practice.

 Readers get their feet wet in the introduction as the authors propose PBL as a viable alternative to the humdrum test-centric curriculum dominating many schools. Gura and Reissman suggest that moving literacy teaching to well-designed PBL activities allows students to be self-motivated in naturally and authentically achieving essential literacy competencies. Throughout the introduction, they reiterate that during well-designed literacy projects, student motivation increases as students invest in the process of learning through doing. They propose that teachers will enjoy teaching through PBL as well.


Additionally, they make the case that PBL is an essential part of the literacy classroom, as it reaches cross-curricular goals of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

 Chapters One, Two, and Three define PBL and refine the reader’s understanding of what differentiates a classroom activity from a PBL exercise by identifying core elements of the project based approach. This approach finds its foundation in the English Language Arts mentioned in Chapter One, and is expanded upon in Chapter Three. Four of the language arts are identified in this book: reading, writing, listening and speaking. Although the authors do not include seeing and visual representation, given they are not part of the common core literacy standards, there is an implicit understanding that PBL is effective at engaging all the essential elements of the English Language Arts. The core elements for PBL are derived from the ELA standards, and are supplemented by the eight essential elements listed on www.bie.org. This book was published in 2016, and bie.org has updated their PBL frameworks to look a little different from what is presented in this work. Much of these changes are semantical, and Gura and Reissman sufficiently explain what must be analyzed for a teacher to successfully implement PBL activities.


The explanations in Chapter Three identify the Common Core literacy standards and discuss how this pedagogical and curricular shift in the classroom meets all four literacy categories with rigor and authenticity. These chapters all discuss how PBL is a natural fit for the Common Core and the literacy classroom.
 

In Chapters Four and Five, the authors discuss some practical benefits of literacy projects. They discuss how PBL activities create intrinsic motivation, because they focus on the students’ real world. Students can find purpose in learning about and impacting their community beyond the classroom as they engage in the project. This naturally moves into the tools and competencies for digital age learners. These are skills that incorporate technology and collaboration, and prove essential for the 21st century learner. The connections between these skills and PBL experiences are detailed in Chapter Five.

Chapters Six, Seven, and Eight move to support the development of teachers’ pedagogies as they offer practical solutions to general questions for PBL experiences. They address the elephant in the room and the reason many teachers stay away from PBL instruction: classroom management. They discuss four strategies for understanding how to manage the learning environment. The authors then provide strategies for teachers to procure an authentic audience for students’ performances. Then, before delving into the practicality of a proposed project, the authors discuss assessment in relation to Common Core standards and learning goals of literacy projects. The practical strategies in these chapters set the stage for Part Two.

Part Two is where Gura and Reissman provide actual projects that are ready to be implemented in the literacy classroom. Each of the twenty chapters begins with an activity summary followed by specific procedures leading to the student learning project. The authors predict the amount of time a project will take, and then comprehensively align the PBL activity to both common core standards and the ISTE Standards for Students.

Assessment suggestions are outlined and the authors describe possible avenues for authentic sharing of students’ work. Each project chapter ends with technology connections, literacy connections, suggested texts, and project extensions. The logic of instruction for each of the projects allows teachers to quickly read and reference as they implement PBL activities. The final chapter includes tips and tricks for incorporating technology, and serves as a guide for teachers who may be less comfortable with digital technologies.

This book makes a meaningful contribution to teacher/practitioner literature. It is organized to first motivate teachers to consider a new approach to standards-based teaching, and the authors provide strong rationale for incorporating viable and authentic projects into the literacy classroom…

Overall, this book is a fantastic guide for the teacher wanting to engage their students in real-world, authentic learning. For those teachers anxious about change and technology use, Gura and Reissman provide scaffolds and supports for reference. As teachers, we consider how to make learning real and authentic for our students, and while it can be difficult, resources like Project-based literacy: Fun literacy projects for powerful common core learning, help facilitate the exploration of new pedagogies and approaches to teaching in the digital age.

Read the full article at its source: http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID=21986