Abigail Adams School

Why Abigail Adams School was nominated

PS 131 strives to support all students by providing opportunities for students to challenge their thinking while supporting their social and emotional needs. Programming such as computational thinking and Thinking Maps ensure that students have ample opportunities throughout the day to develop critical thinking skills in a visible manner for all community members to see and learn from. But the introduction and emphasis on computational thinking solves an additional challenge for the school team. The school administration believes in a standards-based approach in their school to empower their teachers to make the best instructional decisions for their students. However, the administrators have been concerned that some of their staff are not fully fluent with the standards and thus rely upon “learning tricks” within their instructional practices. The schoolwide emphasis on computational thinking has compelled the teachers to think more deeply about their instructional practices and to “connect the dots” between addressing the standards and ensuring that their students are learning skills such as problem-solving. Thus, PS 131 has seen an increase in overall teacher effectiveness due to the professional learning on computational thinking and the ongoing push for integration of those problem-solving strategies within everyday instruction. The emphasis on computational thinking has also provided a common language between teachers, especially in 5th grade which is departmentalized. We think this usage of computational thinking instructional practices to support increased teacher effectiveness is highly innovative.