Programming Pedagogy in Primary Schools: Developing Computing Teaching

During this course, you'll examine a range of pedagogies suitable for teaching programming to primary school pupils, 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.

You will cover:

• Pedagogical content knowledge
• Bloom's taxonomy and SOLO
• Semantic waves
• Instructivist and constructivist learning theories
• Continuum of scaffolding
• Levels of abstraction
• Programming concepts: sequence, repetition, variables, and selection
• Using guided exploration and targeted tasks
• Teaching programming using 'Use-Modify-Create'