Making the connection: programming with animated small world
Proceedings of the 5th annual SIGCSE/SIGCUE ITiCSEconference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy
Computers in Entertainment (CIE) - Theoretical and Practical Computer Applications in Entertainment
Teaching programming and language concepts using LEGOs®
ITiCSE '05 Proceedings of the 10th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
Programming by choice: urban youth learning programming with scratch
Proceedings of the 39th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
The Scratch Programming Language and Environment
ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE)
Animal tlatoque: attracting middle school students to computing through culturally-relevant themes
Proceedings of the 42nd ACM technical symposium on Computer science education
The fairy performance assessment: measuring computational thinking in middle school
Proceedings of the 43rd ACM technical symposium on Computer Science Education
Hairball: lint-inspired static analysis of scratch projects
Proceeding of the 44th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education
Assessment of computer science learning in a scratch-based outreach program
Proceeding of the 44th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education
Modeling the learning progressions of computational thinking of primary grade students
Proceedings of the ninth annual international ACM conference on International computing education research
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The desire to expose more students to computer science has led to the development of a plethora of educational activities and outreach programs to broaden participation in computer science. Despite extensive resources (time and money), they have made little impact on the diversity of students pursuing computer science. To realize large gains, computational thinking must be integrated into K-12 systems, starting with elementary school. In order to do so, existing resources need to be adapted for a school setting. To make a curriculum with lessons that build on each other over several years, and accountability for student learning, we need standards, an understanding of how students learn, and identification of what students know before exposure to the curriculum. In this paper, we present our detailed findings of what fourth graders know before encountering a computational thinking curriculum. Groups of students participated in activities modified from CS Unplugged in order to discover their knowledge (rather than provide instruction). We identify aspects of the activities students were able to complete successfully, and where they will need further instruction. We then explain how we used these results to modify our pilot curriculum.