5 Straight A’s for Coding + Math

by George Gadanidis

Five affordances of coding that enhance math teaching and learning

Coding in the math classroom offers 5 affordances that enhance mathematical thinking and doing, and facilitate conceptual understanding.

Agency

Coding offers students opportunities to be in control and to ask and explore their own “what if” questions.

Access

Coding allows for differentiated learning, by offering students opportunities to engage with minimal prerequisite knowledge and opportunities to investigate more complex relationships and representations.

Abstraction

Coding focuses student attention on the essential characteristics of concepts, helping them develop abstraction representations, while at the same time making these abstract representations feel tangible as they can be easily manipulated.

Automation

Coding allows students to automate their thinking processes, which can then be repeated with just a click. This helps students dynamically model concepts and relationships.

Audience

Coding can be easily shared with others, including family and friends.