Follow Us On Twitter
Twitter

Computer Science in K-12

An A to Z Handbook on
teaching programming
BUY NOW

Introduction Video

Discussion Questions

Questions/Activities
  • Our learning goals for various concepts vary by our context— the grade/age of our students, the learning setting, prior experience, etc.
    • Discuss: Which of the following learning goals related to expressions do you address in your teaching? What pedagogy do you adopt to address these? Which ones are problematic for your students, and in what way? How do you address student difficulties?
    • Activity: Design a lesson plan that explicitly tackles a known difficulty related to expressions, and formatively probes and provides feedback on students’ understanding.
      • E0 Expressions modify/update variable values
      E1 Evaluating expressions of various types
      E1a Evaluating arithmetic/string expressions
      E1b Evaluating Boolean expressions
      E1c Evaluating Relational expressions
      E1d Relational and Boolean expressions result in True/False
      E2 Using operators to create expressions
      E2a Using arithmetic operators (+,-,*,/, mod)
      E2b Using Boolean operators (And, Or, Not) in expressions
      E2c Using Relational operators (==, !=, >, <, >=, <=) in expressions
      E3 Create a Boolean expression (using Boolean and or relational operators) in a conditional
      E4 Create a Boolean expression (using Boolean and or relational operators) to control a loop
      E5 Create an expression using existing variables
      E6 Create new variables from existing ones using expressions
Contributed by Dr. Christine Liebe (CSTeach Course, Colorado School of Mines)
  • What are some ways to help students practice inductive and deductive reasoning utilizing math, and operators and expressions?
  • What might you be teaching if you gave students the sum or product or difference, and asked them to develop a statement that would result in the number?
  • What type of thinking would you be engaging if you asked students to predict the sum, product, or difference of a given code statement?
  • What types of learning activities with manipulatives would help students understand decision trees?

Additional Materials

Expressions as Tree Notional Machine
Dr. Matthias Hauswirth’s lab developed a notional machine for teaching and assessing expressions, and they now have a pretty extensive “Expressions Tutor” web site around this, which is being used for teacher training across Switzerland. The interactive expression tree activities are a bit like a structured version of “Parsons Problems”. The website works for most programming languages; but it has special support for Java, Python, and even some preliminary support for Scratch. The Java variant has a short online “Crash Course” on expressions.
Recent Research
INFACT unplugged, digital, and programming activities suite

Drs. Shuchi Grover, Maya Israel, and David Weintrop collaborated as Co-PIs with the Edge @ TERC group to design Including Neurodiversity in Foundational and Applied Computational Thinking (INFACT).
INFACT engages students in grades 3–8 in problem solving through computational thinking (CT). INFACT involves a variety of on- and off-line CT learning and teaching materials, including games (e.g., Zoombinis), coding, robotics, and hands-on unplugged activities. INFACT is specially designed for inclusive classrooms, integrating supports for executive function within the CT activities. Recent US Department of Education (USEd) funded research showed students who use INFACT show  more improvement on CT assessments than those using other CT programs. This outcome was particularly dramatic for students who face challenges with executive function.

Graphical abstract of INFACT. "Computational thinking teaching and learning materials designed for inclusion show promise to reveal problem solving strengths of neurodivergent learners."

Assessments

Classroom assessments related to Operators & Expressions on edfinity.com