Computational Thinking

Ideas like logical reasoning, step-by-step approaches (algorithms), decomposition, abstraction, generalisation and evaluation have wide applications for solving problems and understanding systems across (and beyond) the school curriculum. As students learn to use these approaches in their computing work, teachers should find that they become better at applying them to other work too.

During their time in elementary grades, students will already have used lots of aspects of computational thinking, and will continue to do so across the curriculum in secondary education. It’s worth making these connections explicit during computing lessons, drawing on the applications of computational thinking that your students will already be familiar with, as well as discussing these ideas with your colleagues teaching other subjects.

For example:

● In English, students are encouraged to plan their writing, to think about the main events and identify the settings and the characters.

● In art, music or design and technology, students think about what they are going to create and how they will work through the steps necessary for this, by breaking down a complex process into a number of planned phases.

● In math, students will identify the key information in a problem before they go on to solve it.

● For more, check the Hack Your Curriculum - A Makerspace Exclusive in the Maker Challenges section!