comment on

Get them to describe everyday tasks. Examples:

Cross the road? Stop at the kerb, look both ways, then cross. You just got killed. You looked, but your actions did not take account of what you saw.

Make a cup of coffee? Fill the kettle (the kettle's already full of air) with water (from the washing up - it'll make you ill) etc.

Do one with the whole class, then divide them into groups each with a different task and get them to "pair programme" it. 3 minutes on the class task, 3 minutes in groups then 4 minutes presenting solutions. This will give them some feel for what real programmers have to look out for.

Regards,

John Davies

Update: I see hominid came up with a very similar idea while I was typing mine.

Update 2: Please let us know what you tried & how it went.

In reply to Re: OT: Teaching Second Graders Programming by davies
in thread OT: Teaching Second Graders Programming by Limbic~Region

Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:
<code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>
Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.


Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister
	PerlMonks