Climate Data Visualization Project with Upper Elementary Girls

About a month ago, I was invited by the upper elementary teacher at my wife's work to help two 4th and 5th grade girls code a climate change data visualization project.

I immediately accepted and wondered when and was curious about more details (in proper requirements gathering form).

My wife told me that they had all the information on what they were doing and I still had no clue besides python pandas coming to mind because my wife teaches art.

Then I did a little research and found a few different guided projects from NASA and a few others that seemed promising. I also reached out to one of my women’s coding groups and learned about scratch.

Last week, I went to help them and was happy to see another 4th grade girl wanted to join the project.

They were lots of fun to work with and they’re planning on presenting to the parents on parents night in May.

They ran with it all as I quickly breezed through a scratch guidebook. At one point, one of them was getting excitedly frustrated trying to get a character to move off the screen and I asked her if there was a wait time anywhere. It turns out there was, she adjusted it and then the next unexpected results happened naturally.

Then the excited frustration showed up in more than one of the girls. What a perfect time to talk to them about iterating and how testing was my favorite part of coding. I tried to help them understand to not expect perfection immediately and set their expectations of working to get to an outcome. They understood and seemed less excited frustrated for a bit. We ended the hour at a point where one of them did not like our stopping point because the character was still not moving off the screen as she wanted it. It was okay though as we were iterating and seeing improvements from when the character just vanished initially.

I’m waiting to see if they want me to come “help” them again which I’ll gladly do, but I’m confident they could run with it and come up with an amazing presentation for parents night.

One of the sweet, thoughtful girls made this for me and asked my wife to give it to me. I love it.