MyCS at 5

Abstract

This paper shares the five-year development and deployment of MyCS, a CS curriculum for "middle-years students," roughly in US grades 4-10. Consistent with many middle-years curricula, MyCS promotes positive individual identification with its field, CS, especially as it intersects with other facets of students' maturing identities. A detailed assessment of students' MyCS experiences reveal significant positive outcomes relative to a control group, as well as many neutral (no-distinction) results relative to the control. Feedback from teacher and administrators have refined MyCS and, perhaps more importantly, built curricular bridges to both elementary- and high-school CS. By tracing MyCS's assessment and evolution, this work highlights how two districts used a middle-years CS foothold from which to establish deeper, district-wide changes in identity.