JHS students partner with younger peers for Hour of Code

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On Tuesday, the fourth and fifth-grade students at Thornton Elementary School had the opportunity to explore several computer science simulations under the guidance of eight freshmen from Johnston High School as part of their Hour of Code month activities.

The freshmen came from the high school and spent the morning in Thornton’s cafeteria as several groups of elementary students rotated through for the computer science session. The event was facilitated by high school computer science teacher Gary Swider, and the students were eight of his computer science students at the high school. The group was accompanied by JHS School Based Coordinator, Joseph Pirraglia. Helping to facilitate and coordinate the event at Thornton was JPS Instructional Technology Coordinator, Debra Thurchetti-Ramm.

According to Pirraglia, the freshmen are part of the new computer science program initiative at Johnston High School which was established in response to Governor Raimondo’s Computer Science for Rhode Island (CS4RI) which had set a goal for computer science to be taught in every public school across the state by this month.

“The freshmen are taking the first year’s computer science class and each year a class will be added, so these students will take the second computer science class next year, and it will extend for all four years,” Pirraglia said. “The class is mandatory and all ninth grade students must take it.”

According to Swider, the computer science students progress through his class, first seeing an end result which has been created with computer code, then learning what the code does, learning how to code, and eventually doing the coding themselves.

The district has one laptop per every student, and each elementary student brought their laptops to the cafeteria for instruction. The students worked together with the freshmen to use the site NetLogo Web (netlogoweb.org), which simulated real-life situations. After each simulation exercise, Swider would reconnect with the students as a group to discuss the real-life applications for the simulation exercises.

“These simulations let you test out real-life, scientific problems quickly, without spending a lot of money, and safely,” said Swider.

The first simulation allowed the students to set up a fireworks display which had several variables. By sliding the bars for each variable, the students could decide details such as how many and which types of fireworks would be in their display and how quickly they fireworks would go off.

“This type of simulation could be used by people who are getting ready to host a fireworks display for the Fourth of July,” Swider said. “Fireworks are expensive, and with a simulation like this they can work out the details about the number of fireworks they need to buy, the number of fade outs, and the number of trails in the sky. It would help them to get the best fireworks display they can.”

The students’ second simulation exercise involved sheep and wolves, with the goal of finding a perfect balance between having just the right amount of sheep and wolves in an ecosystem.

“What happens if the wolves eat all the sheep, or what if there are no wolves at all, and only sheep,” Swider asked the students at the end. “What we are seeing is a real-life connection to the food chain, a model of an ecosystem with growing grass for the sheep to eat and get energy. The wolves eat the sheep, but if they eat all the sheep they will run out of food. The trick is to use your sliders to find just the right balance in your ecosystem. The sliders control things like the amount of sheep, the amount of wolves, how fast the reproduce, and how much energy they use.”

Freshman Christian Canning explained it further to his small group of students.

“Eventually, the wolves will eat all of the sheep and since the sheep are gone, the wolves will all starve and die,” he said. “But, without the wolves, the sheep will just keep multiplying.”

The students had a few minutes left to touch on a third simulation, which involved a health virus. According to freshman Brianna Haynie, it was her favorite of the three taught that morning.

“The red indicates those in the community who are unhealthy, the green are those that are healthy, and the gray are those that are immune or already had the virus and got over it,” she said. “This simulation explores a community of people and the students can see the effect of the virus and what it will do to the community, the recovery rate, how infectious it is, and things like that.”

As the students wrapped up their morning, it was the general consensus that the Hour of Code event was a complete success, and Ramm was pleased with the opportunity that the partnership between schools provided for the elementary students.

The JHS students also enjoyed their morning working with the fourth and fifth graders.

“I had fun teaching the younger kids, it was interesting,” said Scott Ferreira.

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