Skip to content

Computational thinking with Scratch

See also: Scratch, computational-thinking, teaching-digital-technologies

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

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."