Teach kids computing: Developing your programming pedagogy

Course description

During this course, you'll examine a range of pedagogies suitable for teaching programming to learners aged 5 to 11, particularly block-based programming languages.

You'll look at general pedagogical concepts like Bloom's verbs, semantic waves and cognitive load, as well as approaches specific to programming, such as Parson's Problems or designing lessons using levels of abstraction.

You'll also have the opportunity to reflect on your own teaching practices, and how you could adapt your own lessons to make the most of these approaches.

This course is for teachers and subject leaders responsible for teaching programming to learners aged 5 to 11. It assumes some basic programming knowledge, although it does also review the key programming concepts of sequence, variables, selection, and iteration.

What will you learn

After completing these 4 modules, you will be able to:

• Describe a range of pedagogical approaches, including unplugged approaches, 'Use-Modify-Create', and Parson's Problems

• Examine key programming concepts of sequence, variables, selection, and iteration, and how these can be taught

• Model a learning sequence as a semantic wave

• Synthesise different pedagogies into a lesson plan

• Evaluate the use of these pedagogical approaches in your classroom