Computational thinking with Scratch

See: Harvard "Computational Thinking With Scratch"

Identifies concepts, practices, and perspectives for computational thinking with Scratch. Which in turn are used to inform the design of approaches for

Assessing the development of CT
- Artifact-based interviews
  
  Using an interview protocol to engage learners in conversations about their computational practices and products. A rubric is available for assessing the evolving fluency of computational practices. - Design scenarios
  
  Learners encounter a series of projects and engage in four different ways/perspectives: critiquing, extending, debugging, and remixing. Sample projects developed where students are asked: 1) what does it do, 2) how could it be extended, 3) fix a bug, and 4) remix it. - Learner documentation
  
  Learners develop reflective traces of their learning to accompany their Scratch creations.
Supporting the development of CT with Scratch
- Creative computing curriculum guide
  
  Collecting together ideas, strategies and activities for an introductory experience using Scratch.
- Select-reflective instrument
  
  Encourages educators to evaluate/reflect on their activity designs by pondering how well they support the computational practices

Concepts#

Common in many programming languages, but especially in Scratch.

Concept	Definition
sequence	identifying a series of steps for a task
loops	running the same sequence multiple times
parallelism	making things happen at the same time
events	one thing causing another thing to happen
conditionals	making decisions based on conditions
operators	support for mathematical and logical expressions
data	storing, retrieving, and updating values

Practices#

Concepts alone are not enough, what are the practices students engage in.

Practice	Definition
experimenting and iterating	developing a little bit, then trying it out, then developing more
testing and debugging	making sure things work — and finding and solving problems when they arise
reusing and remixing	making something by building on existing projects or ideas
abstracting and modularizing	exploring connections between the whole and the parts

Perspectives#

The shifts in perspectives young people report as they work with Scratch.

Perspective	Definition
expressing	realizing that computation is a medium of creation, "I can create."
connecting	recognizing the power of creating with and for others, "I can do different things when I have access to others."
questioning	feeling empowered to ask questions about the world, "I can (use computation to) ask questions to make sense of (computational things in) the world."