Adventures in Computer Science – Grades 1 & 2
Abstract
Have you sorted your toys at home by color or by size? Have you ever looked for this one particular pencil? Have you asked yourself, why did this search take so long or how can it be faster? The "World of Algorithms" (German: Die Welt der Algorithmen) provides some useful tools for you to achieve your goals as quick as possible. This includes problems that never crossed your minds before. We are going to look at certain problems and their (algorithmic) solutions. It is our goal to learn about the strategies leading to the solutions. We are also facing problems that are so hard to solve for which a quick solutions is out of reach, even for a modern computer.
This is a translation of the advertisement I [Stephan Mennicke] provided for pupils at the 39th Primary School here at Dresden for a so-called "Ganztagsangebot" (GTA for short) which is basically a 1 hour per week course institutionalized as afternoon activity. My target group has been children at the level of 1st and 2nd grade (ages 6 to 8). In this talk, I will briefly explain what I planned to do, what I did and what I'm planning to do in this GTA. I will mainly elaborate on the experiences I gathered in teaching 6-8 year-olds over the course of this school year.