Introducing Computational Thinking to K-5 in a French Context

Vanea Chiprianov (1) , Laurent Gallon (1)

1 LIUPPA - Laboratoire Informatique de l'Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour

Computational Thinking (CT) is beginning to be accepted as one of the fundamental 21 st century skills for everyone. Curricula and environments are being developed for different group ages, from kindergarten to university, in several countries. As part of this global tendency, France has recently taken political decisions to integrate CT Education (CTE) in the mandatory national curriculum. However, many challenges remain until a full implementation is achieved. In this paper we report on a partnership between a university, local elementary schools and the county Ministry of Education (MoE), and on an exploratory project of introducing CT to K-5 students. This project has provided us with valuable feedback on the specifics of integrating CT in a national curriculum and the creation of a partnership and a community. These lessons will be used in the following stage of scaling up to more elementary schools in the entire county, but also addressing other school levels such as kindergarten, middle school and high school.

Keywords: Computer Science Education; Elementary School; Curriculum; Community of practice; Teacher training

Domains: Robotics [cs.RO]; Technology for Human Learning

Vanea Chiprianov, Laurent Gallon. Introducing Computational Thinking to K-5 in a French Context. 21st Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE 2016), Jul 2016, Arequipa, Peru. ⟨10.1145/2899415.2899439⟩. ⟨hal-01908224⟩