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On second thought...

People don't truly understand the power of peer review.  That feedback of a peer who is a friend, colleague or just educator who shares a similar mindset, can be priceless.  I am working on finding a new approach to get more coding into my schools and help my teachers to better understand why the skills that students gain from these activities can be so beneficial.  Originally, I was going to go in and do all the heavy lifting... teach all the kids in 3rd grade.  Be "the girl".  Then I took advantage of an opportunity to share my plan with a fellow educator, Dr. Lisa Turner.  She listened to my pitch of what my plan was with lots of positive reinforcement and then helped me to see the light.  I can reach more people and make a bigger impact if I am not "the girl".  I don't have to be their for every step for the magic to happen.  If I empower the teachers to take an active role as well, they too can experience the same joy and satisfaction of seeing an engaged group of students begging for more and what the next step is and giddy to show you what they did and what they want to do next. Dreaming of what else it could do.   #teacherbuyin 
This has made a significant shift in the direction I was going with my initial plan.  We also discussed how I could incorporate Blended Learning and model it for teachers in my first or second lessons to help teachers see its benefits.  The content would be coding and computational thinking. To learn more about blended learning check out Caitlyn Tucker and her work on Blended Learning.
Now my plan incorporates a blend of various instructional strategies (direct, indirect, experimental instruction, formative and summative assessment) as well as various classroom configurations (small and whole group with plugged and unplugged activities).
I will be helping to guide teachers along the process of this unit so they will have an active part with components of my unit blended in as cross curricular activities in writing and math.  This is all in an effort to help with teacher buy-in and identification of the importance of computational thinking to be help round out a students digital/life skills.  I am really looking forward to getting this started... is it August yet?

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