E16 Supporting ELA Instruction through Coding with Dr. Stacy Delacruz

Welcome to Episode 16 of the teaching literacy podcast. I hope the end of your school year went well, and that you get a well earned break this summer Many teachers use the summer to think about how to improve their literacy instruction for the upcoming school year. You are probably like that, (maybe not quite yet!) but you might be thinking of ways to make the content more engaging, integrate standards across content areas, and raise the bar on reading performance within your classroom. Today’s episode will help you do just that. Today Dr. Stacy Delacruz joins us to talk about integrating literacy instruction with coding for elementary age students. Dr. Delacruz is an associate professor of early childhood literacy at Kennesaw State University. Her research investigates K-12 digital literacy, digital equity, multiliteracies, and embedding technology tools into literacy teaching and learning. In this episode we talk about reasons why teachers might incorporate coding with their ELA standards, what the coding apps look like for elementary age students, and finally how a teacher can design a lesson that effectively uses coding within the classroom. This epsiode has lots of takeaways for your classroom, stick around after the show for my two cents on the conversation. Reference: Delacruz, S. (2020). Starting From Scratch (Jr.): Integrating Code Literacy in the Primary Grades. The Reading Teacher, 73(6), 805-812.