Programming Pedagogy in Primary Schools: Developing Computing Teaching

Learn how to run a successful computer programming class

On this four-week course, you’ll examine a range of teaching methods suitable for teaching programming, particularly block-based programming languages, to primary school pupils.

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

You’ll have the chance to reflect on your current teaching practices, and how you can adapt your own lessons to take advantage of these approaches.

This course is designed for teachers and subject leaders responsible for teaching programming to primary school children (5-11 years old).

You will need some basic programming knowledge but the course does revise the key programming concepts of sequence, variables, selection and iteration.

• Introduction to pedagogical concepts
• Welcome to the course
• Self-reflection
• Pedagogical content knowledge
• End of week 1
• Targeted tasks
• Welcome to week 2
• Learning theories and scaffolding
• Sequence and repetition
• End of week 2
• More targeted tasks
• Welcome to week 3
• Selection: Use-Modify-Create and PRIMM
• Variables and levels of abstraction
• End of week 3
• Applying pedagogical approaches
• Welcome to week 4
• Putting it into practice
• Pedagogy principles
• End of the course