CT + ELA Byte-Sized Integration Guide
🧠 Overview
This CT + ELA Byte-Sized Integration Guide was created for Cornell Tech to support NYC teachers in embedding Computational Thinking (CT) practices into daily ELA instruction.
As schools face mounting pressure to prioritize ELA and Math proficiency, there’s a real risk that computer science instruction — particularly CT — gets deprioritized. This guide offers a lightweight, flexible framework that keeps CT active during literacy blocks, without requiring full coding lessons or tech-heavy setups.
🔧 My Role
Curriculum Designer for Cornell Tech
- Designed the overall concept and structure of the integration guide
- Aligned CT concepts with key literacy practices to ensure relevance and usability
- Created examples that are adaptable, standards-aligned, and grounded in classroom realities
- Piloted and refined the guide based on educator feedback and use across NYC schools
📘 Why This Guide Matters
- Developed to meet the needs of NYC public school teachers
- Ensures CT continues to be taught alongside ELA during high-stakes instructional periods
- Promotes equity of access to CS concepts, even without full CS scheduling
- Helps teachers recognize and name CT thinking already embedded in their literacy practices
💡 Sample Integration Examples
- Summarizing a story → Abstraction (identifying the most important parts)
- Predicting a character’s next move → Algorithms (logic and step-by-step reasoning)
- Breaking down a writing task → Decomposition (draft, revise, edit stages)
- Finding rhymes or sentence patterns → Pattern Recognition
🎯 Outcomes
The guide has been distributed across NYC through Cornell Tech’s educational initiatives. It’s used in PD, coaching, and classroom support to help schools balance literacy mandates with computational thinking outcomes.
Teachers report it’s helped them infuse CT concepts without sacrificing ELA instructional time, and has supported broader CS-for-all goals across literacy-focused classrooms.