Research Of The Design And Application Of Programming Learning Activities For Children Based On Computational Thinking

Since the beginning of the global programming boom for primary and secondary school students,computational thinking has been favored by researchers as a core thinking skill in programming education.Research on computational thinking has been conducted in major countries and regions around the world for many years,while practical research on computational thinking in China is currently focused on senior secondary schools and higher education;in recent years,research on the development of computational thinking for elementary school students based on the programming software Scratch has also gradually begun.The relationship between computational thinking and cognitive ability is interrelated and facilitated,and elementary school students are at the stage of concrete development of cognitive ability,so the cultivation of computational thinking should conform to their cognitive rules.We use Scratch software to establish teaching activities and processes in a project-based learning model to teach children's programming.The study explores how programming for children can improve students' computational thinking skills,how teaching can be more effective,and what connections exist between computational thinking skills and cognitive abilities.This study uses Bloom's and Piaget's cognitive theories as a guide to promote computational thinking skills,and uses Scratch as a carrier to teach and apply its programming school-based curriculum in W elementary schools in the city.The school-based programming curriculum was used in W elementary school to teach the five dimensions of "problem solving ability","pattern recognition","data representation","abstraction",and "algorithmic ability".The five dimensions of "algorithmic ability" were combined with the teaching objectives to conduct an inquiry-based teaching.The evaluation methods of "computational thinking questionnaire","assessment work" and "student interview" were used to evaluate the learning effectiveness of the fourth graders.The students' cognitive level was judged by the change of thinking style and the improvement of their cognitive level by the representation of programming behavior.The analysis of the results showed that the teaching of children's programming was effective in improving the computational thinking and cognitive abilities of elementary school students,and most of the students' thinking styles and depths improved after learning the programming program.However,due to the "large class" nature of the school-based curriculum,not all students were successful,and each student had a different level of mastery,varying programming skills,and not all students had improved computational thinking skills.In response to these problems,this study makes a number of recommendations to optimize the teaching and learning practices of programming for elementary school children,based on a site-specific analysis.