Computational Thinking – Primary Computing

Computational Thinking Across the Curriculum

Computational Thinking is a life skill for everyone. It’s analytical problem solving: finding solutions to ‘problems’ using logical reasoning and systematic approaches.  By ‘problem’ I mean something you want to achieve.  This could be anything from designing and building a physical structure to creating a piece of art.

CT Poster

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Fundamentally, Computational Thinking is about transforming a seemingly complex problem into a simple one that we know how to solve.  It involves taking a complex problem and breaking it down into a series of smaller, more manageable parts (decomposition). Each part can then be looked at individually, considering how similar problems have been solved in the past (pattern recognition), and focusing only on the important details whilst ignoring irrelevant information (abstraction). Next, simple steps or rules to solve each of the smaller problems can be designed (algorithms).  Once we have a working solution, we then use evaluation to analyse it and ask – Is it any good ? Can it be improved? How?

Computational Thinking

Computational Thinking

Teaching computational thinking is not teaching children how to think like a computer.  Computers cannot think.  Computers are stupid.  Everything computers do, people make happen.  It’s also not teaching children how to compute.  It’s developing the knowledge, skills and understanding of how people solve problems.  As such, it absolutely should not be confined to computing lessons and should be used throughout the curriculum to approach and solve problems and communicate and collaborate with others.

Search our blog for our free cross-curricular computing resources and try six free units from our cross-curricular computing scheme.

George Boole – Primary Computing Resource

Biography for children – 200th birthday of ‘founder of Computer Science’ George Boole

Download our free biography of George Boole for primary aged pupils.  This works really well with our Binary Beads unit in iData which is available free as part of our contribution to this year’s Hour of Code.

The children encode their first names using binary and then make bracelets using coloured beads, where one colour represents zero and another represents one.

This resource will also soon form part of a computing and history unit in our forthcoming cross-curricular computing pack – iCompute Across The Curriculum.  Download the free lesson and associated materials from our Hour of Code page.

George Boole biography for kids

Click image to download the biography – for the associated lesson plan, visit www.icompute-uk.com/hoc