Coding improves Math Grades: Find out how

Today many kids coding apps are available in the market. This is because more and more parents are realizing the importance of teaching coding to their kids. In modern times, coding has indeed become an essential skill to have. Hence, it is critical that coding be taught to kids as early as possible. Coding is an essential tool to not only open up good career options but also to develop critical thinking ability in young kids. In this blog, we will explore how learning coding helps students become better at subjects like maths which require a critical thinking ability.

1. Develops Logical Thinking

One of the biggest criticisms of the traditional educational model is that it emphasizes a lot on rote memorization. This is a reason why traditional educational models are unable to motivate students to take an interest in math.

It is a fact that one cannot become proficient in coding by rote memorization. You just can’t memorize trillions of lines of codes. To be able to code, the coder must have good logical thinking skills. It is exactly for this skill that teaching coding to kids is essential. When kids are exposed to the practice of understanding the logic behind solving a problem, they start developing logical thinking skills that help them throughout their life. In particular, logical thinking helps students become good at math. Once you have a habit of thinking about every problem in a logical way goes a long way in solving complex math problems. A lot of kids coding apps also have maths-related projects in them. Doing such projects further helps kids become more comfortable with maths.

2. Builds Self-confidence and Self-esteem

In general, the key reason why students dislike math is that they are scared of it. Why are they sacred? Because they can’t solve problems on their own and thereby they never develop self-confidence.

So how does coding help students in overcoming this? Coding is all about solving problems. This problem-solving aspect of coding helps children develop self-confidence. Once students develop logical thinking skills, they slowly become proficient in solving unknown problems by themselves. This process of working out the solution by themselves develops self-confidence in students. This invariably helps students in solving math problems as well.

3. Helps understand real-world applications of math

One of the reasons why math scares kids is because it seems abstract, something without real-life application. Traditional teaching often does not focus on the practical application of maths and leaves students with a fear of math. One of the best ways to expose students to real-world applications of math is to expose them to coding.

Many kids coding apps use simple block-based coding to teach introductory coding concepts to kids. The most common problem involved in such coding lessons is the one where one is to move a character from one point to another. Now for this simple operation, kids need to tell the computer how many places and in which direction the character needs to move to reach the desired location. Now if you think about this carefully, this operation involves math. This is indirectly teaching the kids how to move from a point to another in the XY plane. Now when the kids are later taught XY-plane and coordinates, they immediately relate to what they have learned in coding.

In short, coding can help empower kids in a multitude of ways and help in building strong, confident, and positive personalities. This has been recognized by the Indian government too. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 proposes the introduction of coding classes for young students. The policy states that encouraging children to learn to code and exposing them to technology at a young age will take them a long way and prepare them for the future, in a better manner. It opens doors of innovation and creativity by pushing students to set achievable goals and transform the way they think about career paths.

At LEAD Powered Schools, the Coding and Computational Skill (CCS) program applies the ‘USE, THINK, BUILD’ approach combined with an excellent curriculum and accessible technology. With this method, students make practical use of software programs, which helps them think and, finally, build websites, games, apps, and much more.