Introducing Coding with the CRA Model

Jennifer had the privilege in early June to be camp director and lead instructor for the first ever #GenCyber Middle Grades Teacher Camp at Augusta University. The camp was funded by grant from the NSA. Dave was also able to participate as a lead learner during the camp and the beta tester of all the curriculum. During the course of writing the grant and curriculum we learned a TON about cyber and plan to share a series of posts about the curriculum but the first is about Jennifer's approach to teaching coding.

As a former math teacher Jennifer utilized the Concrete Representational Abstract (CRA) Approach. When a concept is introduced in mathematics, it is recommended that the teacher first uses concrete or physical manipulatives. 

C - Concrete

During the camp, coding was introduced using concrete hands-on unplugged activity that were kinesthetic in nature. During the camp participants traveled through 5 stations.  Four of the stations were from Code.org unplugged (Move it! Move it!, Graph Paper Programming, Getting Loopy, and Conditionals with Cards). The 5th station was a "Simon Says" game of the Cyber First Principle Activity.  

R - Representational

In mathematics, after students have a basic understanding with concrete methods, instruction moves to representational or pictorial approach. During the camp, the second type of activity used involved pictographic blocks of code. For example, the use of Sphero Macro Lab App for Creating Art with Code, Osmo Coding, and Scratch with Google CS First High Seas. 

A - Abstract

In mathematics, the abstract or symbolic approach is the last thing introduced. This is the use of numbers signs and variables. During the camp our Google Script activity, which was the last of our coding activities, was the symbolic approach. At the writing of this report, we have not been able to find any research that suggests the CRA approach has been used to introduce coding. Based on our experiences with teachers during the camp we believe this instructional technique will help improve teaching methods for delivering cyber security content to K-12 particularly with math teachers who may already be familiar with the CRA strategy.