Computational Thinking - A Practical Guide to Teaching Computing and ICT in the Secondary School - page 98

Task 5.4
Pattern Recognition
Can you identify more examples to illustrate how Pattern Recognition can be
useful to your pupils?
Pattern Generalisation
Generalisation is the process of recognising common patterns across problems or
subproblems to simplify the process by sharing common features. This is done by
making explicit what is shared between the examples, and what is different about
them. For example, in weather forecasting, patterns identified from past data on
environmental conditions, such as various combinations of ambient temperature
and humidity, are used to hypothesise future weather. In coding, having written a
procedure to draw a square of size 3 and another to draw a square of size 5, pupils
might recognise a rule that allows them to create a procedure to draw a square of
any size N. In this way, some of the code used in different programs can be written
once, debugged once and documented once. The key concept pupils must
understand is that, having identified a pattern, it may be possible to extract rules
from their observations that can be applied to new situations.
Abstraction
In Abstraction, Computational Thinking attempts to deal with complexity by
hiding details behind a simplified model of the situation. Modelling, as discussed
in Chapter 6 , is the process of developing a representation of a real-world issue,
system or situation, which captures the key aspects for a particular purpose, but
omits everything considered unnecessary for the particular problem.
Task 5.5
Abstraction
Abstraction is a difficult concept for pupils to grasp, but once they understand it
they find it a useful skill for dealing with complexity. Can you think of ways of
helping Year 8 pupils to apply this concept?
HOW DO YOU TEACH COMPUTATIONAL THINKING?
Use the language
As with any subject, Computing has subject-specific vocabulary. We must teach
this to the pupils and encourage them to use it correctly and in context. Thus it is
important to introduce pupils to the language of Computational Thinking from the
beginning.