Welcome to the Wind River Elementary CS Collaborative

What is the Wind River Elementary CS Collaborative?

The Wind River Elementary CS Collaborative is a partnership between the Wyoming Department of Education, the American Institutes for Research, BootUp PD, Partner to Improve and three Wyoming school districts (Fremont County School District #38, Fremont County School District #21, and Fremont County School District #14). The goals of the Wind River Elementary CS Collaborative:

• Develop and refine two culturally relevant computer science units and teacher professional development with teachers of Grades 3–5 on the Wind River Reservation.
• Build Grades 3–5 teachers’ interest in, knowledge of, and ability to bring computer science to their students through English language arts and social studies.
• Teach computer science concepts to Grades 3–5 students in a culturally relevant way.

Timeline:

• October 2019 – The Wind River CS Collaborative received funding from National Science Foundation
• December 2019 - Traveled to Wind River Reservation to discuss the project with the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho business councils.
• February 2020 - Project team traveled to Wind River Reservation to conduct focus groups to discuss strengths of the community and cultures of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho.
• May 2020 - AIR team sent findings of focus groups to Fort Washakie, Fremont #38, and Wyoming Indian Schools superintendents.
• July 2020 - BootUp created the first draft of the culturally relevant curricular units.
• August 2020 - BootUp team performed its first professional development session with Fort Washakie teachers.
• January – March 2021 - AIR recruited and gathered feedback from the Wind River Community on the first draft of the curriculum about cultural sacredness
• March – April 2021: AIR and WDE conducted meetings with the superintendents and leaders of Fremont #21, Fremont #38, and Wyoming Indian Schools
• Summer 2021: The Wind River CS Collaborative hosted an art competition for K-12 students at Fremont #21, Fremont #38, and Wyoming Indian Schools to contribute pieces for the curricular units.

Participant Resources:

• Curriculum Resources : Contains lesson plans and coding resources for Wind River collaborative participants and their students.
• Teacher Self-Efficacy Survey:This survey measures teachers’ comfort level and experience in computer science and computational thinking
• Wind River PD Feedback Survey: This survey gathers feedback on professional development sessions with BootUp PD. It should be completed after every professional development session.
• Wind River Collaborative Lesson Reflection Survey: This survey is a place for reflection and feedback after completing a lesson plan. It should be completed after teaching a lesson plan.
• Professional Learning Collaborative Meeting Feedback Form: This survey gathers feedback on the professional learning collaborative meetings. It should be completed after every PLC meeting.