Mrs. Upshaw’s Computer Classes begin their unit on Computer Science and Programming

Computational Thinking

With nothing but paper and markers, students learned the four steps of computational thinking. After a brief introduction, students were broken into groups where they created directions for other students to draw a specific monster (from a catalog of pre-selected monsters). The entire task was to decompose, then analyze all monsters in the catalog for patterns, abstract different details from the monsters, then use that information to create an algorithm (directions) for another team to draw a certain monster. Teams then switch algorithms with another group and drew the monster based on what that algorithm indicated.