Using Scratch Software to Develop the Computational Thinking of Primary School Students

Abstract

The article examines the impact of using the Scratch program on the development of computational thinking in younger schoolchildren. The purpose of this study was to teach primary school students the subject of "Digital literacy" tasks "Creating an online game with codes" on the topic "Logical operators" were proposed, and studies on the development of students' computational thinking were developed. Task execution planning provides for the desire to create independently created games, successfully complete the stage of their execution in the Scratch program, and share your tasks in the Scratch program with classmates, introducing them to the network. Some elementary school students got acquainted with the tasks shared by their classmates and showed a high level of computational thinking and motivation to create additional games from them for the online platform. As a result, the influence of students on the skills of computational thinking, communication and independent development is shown. Due to the development of information technology, learning programming at an early age is important because they should not have problems understanding the logic of programming when they reach the age of a bachelor's degree. Using visual, two-dimensional Scratch for this purpose allows children to express their ideas and thoughts interactively. They can create their own projects using blocks with various functions such as motion, sound and animation. This teaching of children to present their ideas and concepts in a certain form shows the impact on the development of their representational abilities, that is, on their computational thinking.