Wading River School fourth and fifth grade students look up to their older peers and in a recent visit they also listened as they worked with Shoreham-Wading River High School computer science students on block coding for Dash robots. The activity was a partnership between computer science teacher Rob Marine-Mancuso and elementary school librarian Brittany LaValle to create interest about the district’s fast-growing computer science program among younger students.  

“We want students to become excited to take a middle school computer science course,” Mr. Marine-Mancuso said. “We are also working hard on vertically integrating the computer science program throughout the district.”  

Mr. Marine-Mancuso said the partnership between the two schools also creates community engagement in that students see a brother or sister of one of their peers and think that maybe they can take a computer science course one day, he added.    

The district currently offers a plethora of interesting computer science courses, including two Advanced Placement courses (computer science principles and programming in Java), Introduction to CyberSecurity, Introduction to Programming and the required Digital Literacy course.