Identifying Computational Thinking in Storytelling Literacy Activities with Scratch Jr.

Abstract

Students are learning to interact with, design for, and sometimes even program computers at earlier and earlier ages. Teachers and researchers can relatively easily measure progress in learning programming tasks, but assessing conceptual understanding of computation, mainly when programming tasks are not present, is less defined or non-existent. Computational Thinking (CT) generally refers to knowledge and skills apart from, and possibly a precursor to, the ability to write computer programs, yet is commonly measured through the quality of programming. Are there ways of qualifying CT 'maturity' outside of programming tasks? This study looks at the intersection of CT and CS in first-grade learners who are developing computational solutions involving literacy tasks. Students retell a story by animating characters in Scratch Jr. by breaking down the story, creating an animation storyboard, and finally implementing the plan in Scratch Jr. For most of the participants, this is their first time using Scratch Jr. or any programming language. Therefore, their early experience with technology means they are working on an analysis of a story using literacy skills, considering a visual representation of the story, and learning how to realize the expression of the storyline using a computer language. To better understand the general concept of CT, we analyzed video data of the students building their animated story, along with the artifacts of design and code. This qualitative data provides indicators of how their thinking progresses from little to at least working knowledge of writing a program. Using qualitative analysis, we evaluate how their initial design evolves, simplifies, or otherwise changes as the novices move from general problem solving to creating a computational solution. CT seems to be a specialized version of design and engineering design in general. Understanding how these first graders move from generally approaching a problem to a computational solution may give insight into how CT matures and the role of programming in that maturity. By capturing how a design evolves, we can suggest how CT can be 'seen' in artifacts produced that are not programming code. The goal is to find markers of CT in design and language that transcends specific programmed implementations.

The Impact of Coding Apps to Support Young Children in Computational Thinking and Computational Fluency. A Literature Review

“…Similarly, Lowe and Brophy. (2019) noted that ScratchJr is a powerful accelerator for understanding computation than abstract storytelling alone.…”

Can Preschoolers Learn Computational Thinking and Coding Skills with ScratchJr? A Systematic Literature Review

“…Kazakoff also recommended ScratchJr implementation in preschool classrooms to help children acquire language and cognitive and social skills. Lowe and Brophy (2019) acknowledged the app as an accelerator for young children to understand computation in developmentally appropriate situations. They also highlighted its environment designed to inspire open-ended play.…”

“…Lowe and Brophy (2019) acknowledged the app as an accelerator for young children to understand computation in developmentally appropriate situations. They also highlighted its environment designed to inspire open-ended play.…”

Analyzing computational thinking studies in Scratch programming: A review of elementary education literature

“…Storytelling involves both reading and writing, and Scratch has been documented in literature as a novel way to promote computational thinking skills, especially with younger/early grade students (Burke, 2012;Lowe & Brophy, 2019;Smith & Burrow, 2016;Von Gillern, 2017). Smith and Burrow (2017) analyzed five and seven-year old children's use of CT skills and observed looping actions, debugging, remixing, and expression as the students generated ideas and content for their story, which are all examples of concrete CT skills.…”

“…Smith and Burrow (2017) analyzed five and seven-year old children's use of CT skills and observed looping actions, debugging, remixing, and expression as the students generated ideas and content for their story, which are all examples of concrete CT skills. Similarly, Lowe and Brophy (2019) concluded that computational thinking seems to be most valuable in young learners when it is grounded in concrete activities such as storytelling. They also argued that students can benefit from spending time in abstract story planning since this bears connection to decomposition and algorithm design.…”