It can be useful for early years practitioners to know about Computational Thinking and the language that will be used in computing at Key Stage 1 . Computational thinking is not about technology but about problem solving. The above image comes from Barefoot Computing.
The key concepts match much of what already happens in early years and can be useful when explaining to other staff, and especially those that were not early years specialists, what their children were learning.
The key concepts are:
- Logic – building on what children know, asking what do you know, what can you tell me about?
- Algorithms – doing anything step by step to get to an end point, learning routines and systems, following instructions, creating a flow chart to follow
- Decomposition – big problem solving, break it down into little steps
- Pattern recognition – repeating patterns, spotting patterns
- Abstraction – getting rid of details that you don’t need, focus on what’s important
- Evaluation – reflect on what they have done, how to make it better, how to change it for some people to make sure they can do it too
Thanks to Claire Graham from North Tyneside who talked about this at the Action Research group meeting in April
