Coding, reading, and writing: Integrated instruction in written language
Robert H. Thompson, Steven L. Tanimoto, Virginia Wise Berninger, William E. Nagy · 2016
We describe the design and a trial run of an integrated course of instruction in reading, writing, and computer programming, in order to assess potential synergies of learning them together. Twelve pre-teen students diagnosed with dyslexia each took a sequence of lessons of approximately 90 minutes each over a 3-month period. In addition to computer learning activities in handwriting, word reading, word spelling, sentence and text reading comprehension, there were coding activities using “Kokopelli's World,” a blocks-style visual language with its own microworld. The results suggest that the potential synergies from this form of integrated instruction in written language and computer programming include increased student motivation, complementary pedagogical affordances and increased awareness of the relationship between written language and technology.