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Teaching Primary School Students Programming?
NotesSensei asks: "Recently I was teasing the teacher who runs the computer club in my sons' primary school: 'You teach the kids only how to use software but not how to make software.' Today I got an email: 'OK, you're in: teach them programming.' Now I wonder what language should I pick? My first lesson will be the board game c-jump, but after that? The contestants are: Kids programming language KPL (ab VB.net derivate; Java using BlueJ; Greenfoot (and the BlueJ); and HTML. Does it sound like I'm on the right track or should I try something completely different? We are looking at primary 3-5 (that's 10-13 in this part of the world). Where can I find inspiration for the curriculum?"
Some may argue (and probably will) but I have always found Scheme to be an interesting language to lets kids play with because of the "instant gratification" of an interpreted language's "read-eval-print" paradigm. Plus, with "The Little Schemer", which presents things in a very logical, pedogogical way, which is well suited to clever children.
The Little Schemer
Just a thought...
Unless they're vaccinated, don't give them MUMPS; if you do find a nice Doctor (Like Dr. Pascal), 'cuz Pascal was fun for me in College.
If they like noises, Squeak is good, but the cogently verbiaged might prefer SmallTalk in a group. For those speech impaired, knowing there's other people who Lisp would be good.
The mean ones will abuse Snobol in Winter
The A.D.D. kids will probably like the feeling of Euphoria they get from their first
Of course, you could teach them a very nice language with a horrible name, Brainfuck.
Or, you could just look Here for a comparison of popular programming languages.
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
Have you considered python? It has an interactive shell, which will let the basic concepts of programming come through. Also, you could take the first parts of How to Think Like a Computer Scientist (freely available and modifiable) and adapt them to the age level. The first few lessons should be fine, although they might need expanded somewhat.
Alternately, perhaps something more graphic-oriented would be desirable. If it were still around and supported, I would suggest Apple's Hypercard program. It appears there are some clones out there also, although I have no idea how good they are. (The first alternative listed says it is popular with educators.)
Good luck.
As one of the 20 (My fifth grade teacher actually read Piaget and showed it to me and labeled me as such) I look at my classmates and see that now (12th grade) they still struggle with symbolic concepts because they were codeled with the concrete for much too long. The example is physics, where the solutions are often entirely symbolic, many students have trouble with manipulating and thinking abstractly in symbols. However in earlier classes they are encouraged to plug in concrete values as soon as they learn them, and I was actually repremanded for using symbols (My Father is a Professor of Physics and when helping me with math homework at a young age insisted on my use of symbols instead of concrete numbers.) in Chemistry I when we were working with heating and cooling and temperature. While the concrete numberse were initially easily grasped by the class, problems quickly arose when they forgot the meaning of each number because it changed problem to problem and began to forget the theory behind what they were doing. The result was that every single class member could work any type of problem they had seen previously on memory of the motions to go through, but had no clue as to what they were doing and could not solve any new type of problem based on the theory they knew. In short: While they may still be developing the ability to understand abstractions, the sooner they begin learning the better they will be for life. You'll be doing them a favor by introducing them to the concept of a variable and a general solution.