Parent Teacher Magazine Union County Public Schools May/June 2018 | Page 6

UCPS students hone critical thinking and coding skills in cluster-wide coding clubs
If you were asked to teach someone how to draw a picture by
only giving verbal instructions, could you do it?
That’s just one of the regular “offline coding questions” that
Hemby Bridge Elementary teacher Christina Geiger regularly poses
to students in her school’s coding club.
Each week, the club’s fourth and fifth graders spend their
afternoons working on online and offline coding, including coding
websites and critical thinking and collaboration activities.
“They may not go into computers or technology in the future,
but to be able to sit as a team and come up with a solution and
communicate that solution is huge,” she said. “Being able to
critically solve problems and communicate solutions is what I want
them to take away from this club, and it will help them in middle
school, high school and in whatever career they want to pursue.”
Encouraging students to work collaboratively and think
critically is at the heart of the coding clubs that, beginning this
school year, are now offered at every elementary school in the
Porter Ridge cluster.
Porter Ridge schools have a cluster-wide focus on science,
technology, engineering, arts and math (STEAM). With the
addition of the $40,000 coding and mobile app development grant
that was awarded to Porter Ridge Middle and High earlier this
school year, the new coding clubs offered at each of the cluster’s
elementary schools provide more of a vertical alignment to the
technology opportunities that will be available to the students as
they enter middle and high school.
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4 • May/June 2018 • Parent Teacher Magazine 
Every elementary school in the Porter Ridge cluster now offers
coding clubs to its students. The clubs focus on helping students
develop their critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and
communication skills.
now they’re places where students not only gain knowledge, but
express knowledge according to the four Cs: collaboration, critical
thinking, creativity and communication,” said UCPS Library Media
Services Coordinator Lisa Moniz. “We’re going to need people who
are innovative and creative. The premise of the coding clubs is to
expose students to computer science not for the sake of computer
science, but for computational thinking because that is a skill that
will be critical in the future.”
At Sardis Elementary, the school’s coding club consists of 16
diverse fourth and fifth grade students. As is the case with Hemby
Bridge Elementary’s club, the coding club at Sardis Elementary
consists of nearly an even number of girls and boys.
“The girls have blossomed in this club and they absolutely love
it. They know that this doesn’t have to be a boy thing,” said Sardis
Elementary Media Coordinator Dr. Blair Austin.
During their weekly club meetings, the Sardis Elementary
students work on makerspaces, VEX robotics kits and other types
of technology they will encounter as they transition to Porter
Ridge Middle.
At times it can look like the students are just playing with
Legos, Dr. Austin said, but they’re doing much more than that. The
curriculum associated with the Legos and robotics kits encourage
critical thinking, which is skill that is needed in the 21st century.
“Coding is critical thinking and it’s as foundational as ABCs.
There are certain high school classes that are very advanced, so
if we don’t prepare them now at this level then it will be hard for
them to go as far as they can,” she said. “Give them a few years –
we hope by the time they go to middle school, they will have the
coding and robotics foundation they will need to be successful.”