After a meeting at the end of last term about implementing the Digital Technologies curriculum, I thought this would be a good area to branch my Inquiry into for Term 2. This meeting re-inforced the notion that as exciting as coding and all the fun technology we could provide would be for the kids, they would need a lot of language around how to use and understand them.
So far this term I have been focussing on directional language. We have been looking at our left and right, forwards and backwards, and all the different prepositions we could think of. The children have enjoyed guiding their friends through mazes and discovering different words to describe concepts they already had. - Such as "beside" instead of "next to" and "between" instead of "in the middle of".
I feel like this is giving them a good basis from which to begin their coding on Scratch Jnr.
Where to next? There is always more language to be gifted, and I think the key is to not be scared to use big words that the children may not yet understand. How else are they to learn them if they never get exposed to them? Once I feel Digital Technologies vocabulary has been built up sufficiently, I will probably choose another area in which to scrutinise my teaching of subject-specific vocabulary. Given our current focus on DMiC, Maths looks like a good area to move into next.
