The IT Curriculum in the Classroom

SIS Brasília The IT Curriculum in the Classroom

Hayley Waghorn, Primary Years Programme (PYP) Coordinator at SIS Brasília

In a world of technological change, brings the need for a changing curriculum that implements and integrates technology learning. Along with these changes, come new environments for our students to navigate, new tools to understand, new skills, and new opportunities to connect learning to purposeful and authentic contexts. With this in mind, the SIS IT Curriculum has been integrated and implemented into our broader curriculum over the past 3 years.

Our implementation of the IT curriculum began with a series of teacher workshops conducted by Diogo, our IT Trainer for Brazil. This was important to give our teachers the knowledge and skills they needed in order to adapt their pedagogy and ways of thinking with regards to IT. Just like we would with our students, the teacher workshops took a very hands-on approach where we learned the technological tools by exploring, creating and problem-solving. Teachers not only had fun in the process, but came away with an excitement and eagerness to share it with their students and try it in the classroom.

Teachers work in collaboration to connect and integrate the IT curriculum into the units of inquiry as well as in single-subject activities, making learning meaningful and contextual. The units of inquiry are planned to make authentic connections where IT has a real purpose in the students' inquiries.

Through the strand of programming, preschool and grade 1 students learn to programme floor robots, such as Bee-Bots and Blue-Bots. During a unit based on the theme "How We Express Ourselves," preschool students used Bee-Bots to learn to give and follow directions and identify and describe different feelings and emotions. The students drew various facial expressions to make the floor mat and then programmed the Bee-Bots to reach a given drawing on the mat. Through this activity the students developed their communication and thinking skills in order to identify, represent and describe emotions. Grade 1 students inquire into the theme "Where We Are in Place and Time," by understanding maps and the purpose of maps. During this unit students learn to programme Bee-Bots on a given floor map. They explore a variety of maps by learning to give and follow directions to reach a desired place on a map. A part of the digital technology strand, is for students to learn to use search engines. This is important specifically for grade 4 and 5 students, who use internet research for many of their classes. For this reason, students learn different browser functions and terminology in order to navigate this environment safely and effectively.

The media strand is where students engage their creativity and express themselves in the digital world. Grade 1 students inquire into "How We Express Ourselves," by understanding and comparing different fairy tales. Towards the end of this unit, they create and publish their own fairytale using the Book Creator application. It is a very easy application for young learners to navigate and enables them to share their stories with a wider audience. Grade 5 students learn to use the Microsoft application Sway to create interactive websites as a platform to share and present their inquiries in an informative manner. Under the theme "How We Express Ourselves," they develop an understanding of how technology enables us to communicate powerful messages, and use this to create and present their own.

In these examples, students are learning the technology tools, learning about technology and also learning through technology to facilitate and expand learning opportunities within the curriculum and beyond. With this, students are becoming prepared through the development of critical, creative and transfer thinking skills needed for the 21st century.