Eastview Middle School students gain valuable coding, language skills in summer program

A group of young programmers at Eastview Middle School presented their final projects to their summer class on Friday before they were presented with their graduation certificates and recognized by Assistant Principal Suzanne Lasser for their coding prowess.

The 17 incoming seventh-graders spent two weeks learning the principles of coding and getting comfortable with the open source program P5JS, a popular JavaScript tool for learning code and making art, in the Voices In Code program.

Media arts teacher Lauren Berrios was assisted by teaching assistants Rija Ahmed and Stefani Rados in teaching the youngsters, many of whom are ELLs, or English Language Learners, who also handle the challenges of communicating outside their native languages.

The class was divided into several teams, each of which came up with a name for their project, including Team Peru, Team STEM, Team Capture Visual, Team Blue-Bings, Team Sports and Team Soccer.

Ms. Berrios called each team up to present their final project, which they completed in just two days. Their P5JS coding was displayed on the interactive board as they explained their work and activated the animation and sound. Each team received an enthusiastic round of applause from their classmates, teachers and Ms. Lasser.

In their presentation, Danishla and Maria wrote that they “decided to do a camera because we both like taking photos and we both want to be actresses.”

“We made it like we are a tourist and we took pictures to put together for the project,” Danishla said after receiving her certificate. “We did it step by step at first in class. We showed circles, squares, triangles and colors. Then we added variables to them.”

She said that although her main interest is sports and running, she has “an interest in technology and how things work.”
The Team Soccer trio -- Mateo, Andrey and Yahya – was cheered for creating a colorful animation of a ball being kicked into the goal.

And Marilyn and Ivanna shared their love of Russian music by creating a program that played three songs in the language.

“You are a true artist with a vision for your code, which pushes you to take difficult challenges like learning curves and adding arcs to the beach scene that made you feel at home,” the teachers wrote for Ivanna on the graduation slide.

On her graduation image, Marilyn received praise for being “quick to come up with creative code ideas, quick to share stories from Peru, and you loved challenging us with your quick Spanish words.

“We’ve loved your sense of humor,” the teachers added.

At the conclusion, Ms. Lasser complimented the group for their impressive work.

“I want to share how inspired I feel by each of you,” the assistant principal said. “You came into this class and trusted Ms. Berrios, Ms. Rados and Ms. Ahmed, and trusted each other. You found something that you had in common and each one of your projects reflected that commonality.

“This was not easy – this work is hard. Don’t ever think you’re not capable of greatness,” Ms. Lasser said.

Ms. Berrios said the students were ready for the independent project.

“We felt they’d learn a lot from the experience. Many are very artistic but didn’t have experience with code,” she said, adding that the goal also was to build a community and create a “fun environment.”

Voices in Code was part of the two-week Summer Horizons program, which is mainly designed to help English as a New Language students get acclimated to middle school, and also serves as a mentorship opportunity for incoming seventh-graders.