How will kids in Ontario be taught coding in kindergarten?

Ontario kindergarten kids will likely not learn coding by sitting in front of a computer screen as part of the new provincial curriculum.

Ontario kindergarten kids will likely not learn coding by sitting in front of a computer screen as part of the new provincial curriculum.

Education Minister Stephen Lecce announced earlier this week the province will be revamping the 2016 curriculum for its youngest learners.

Kids between the ages of four and five will soon have mandatory literacy and math instruction as early as kindergarten. Part of that mandatory learning, Lecce said, would be coding.

The announcement led some to wonder how this would work—would kids be at a keyboard learning HTML or Python?

While the curriculum has not been finalized, the likely answer is no. Experts say they expect instruction to remain unplugged and play-based.

“What coding does is create a logical understanding of if-then relationships, cause and effect relationships,” Todd Cunningham, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at the University of Toronto, told CTV News Toronto.

Cunningham added that the game ‘Simon Says,’ where kids are told to follow the actions of a leader, could be an example of how those relationships are taught.