Shalini shares her experience about first visit to the coding class!

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We invite people in class to observe and be part of the class to learn coding. We urge people to share their experience of being a part of the class so that we can capture the experience, publish it on the blog and give hundreds of people a chance to be part of the experience. Here, is one such blog written by Shalini Kumari sharing her experience of being in the coding class of Code to Enhance Learning on 26 September 2018.

“With the enhancement of technology, I always feel I am missing something because I am not very
updated. I was a fellow at Teach For India, for two years, in one of the schools in Ahmedabad. I
always wanted the kids to get the best and the most updated and how I felt about technology,
they shouldn’t feel about it. This introduced me to coding by Irfan Lalani, fellow at Teach For India, Ahmedabad leading a non profit initiative called Code to Enhance Learning. This was 2 years back.

Currently, I work as a Program Manager in Teach For India. I visited a school where Teach for India and Code to Enhance Learning both has intervention. I learned that Code to Enhance Learning has intervention in different low income schools where the support is given on curriculum and resources around coding. Teachers are also coached so that they are able to execute lessons in class during schools effectively and efficiently.

While observing, I happened to stop by in a coding class in grade 4 in Shama School, Shahpur, Ahmedabad having intervention of Code to Enhance Learning. The kids were engaged in unplugged activity to learn coding. The activity started with 30-35 4th graders, who were asked to make lemonade. The entire session was planned to bring the concept of “Experimentation”in the kids.

         

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kids chose their partners and started working in pairs. The creativity, enthusiasm, fun in the room amazed me. I wish I were the student of that class. To enhanced the rigor of the class and to bring the essence of experiment, kids were given turmeric powder to add in lemonade. They did add turmeric and hence understood what ‘experimentation’ looks like.

It made the kids visualize how experimentation looks like and it became so easy to make them understand the concept, meaning of experimentation, ingredients, the real life application of the same.

It was a pleasure to watch the kids so engaged, one of them connected the session back to “loop” which was taught in previous classes, one of them shared how she was asked to make lemonade with sugar, salt and water but never added turmeric.

Overall it was one of the great experiences by just observing the session as an audience.”

Shalini Kumari

Program Manager

Teach for India, Ahmedabad