Problem statement: A majority of students are scoring low on Math unit assessments.

computational thinking

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Problem statement: A majority of students are scoring low on Math unit assessments. by Mind Map: Problem statement: A majority of students are scoring low on Math unit assessments.

1. Pattern Recognition: After each question is grouped correctly, teachers will look at how many students missed in each group. Teachers will look for a pattern of questions missed based on the TEKS. Any questions where the majority of the students missed will be pulled aside for reteach. For example if there are 3 questions related to 2.4B and more than half the students missed them they will be pulled aside.

1.1. Rationale: According to Google Computational Thinking for Educators (n.d.) pattern recognition is finding the similarities and differences between the parts.

2. Decomposition: First the teachers will take each test and group each question by the TEKS. Then teachers will cut apart the test to put the questions together based on the TEKS. This will help to visualize each question and the format it was given in.

2.1. Rationale: According to Google for Education (2012), decomposition is taking a problem and breaking it down into smaller pieces.

3. Algorithm Design: Teachers will start by reteaching the TEKS whole group. A short formative assessment will be given to the whole class. After assessing the work, individual student who need further instruction will be pulled in small groups based on the skill they need to work on. Problems will be included in morning work to spiral review the skill.

3.1. Rationale: Much like a recipe, algorithm design is a step by step list of instructions (Yadav, Hong, & Stephenson, 2016).

4. Abstraction: Teachers gave another assessment based on the same TEKS that were considered low. Students scored higher after teachers broke down each question, retaught the skill, and spiral reviewed for further practice. Teachers decided it would be beneficial to provide a pretest before teaching new content. This would allow teachers to assess where their students are prior to the unit assessments. Then teachers would be better prepared to help those students who need additional support.

4.1. Rationale: According to Google Computational Thinking for Educators (n.d.) abstraction is finding the principles that generate patterns.

5. References: Google Computational Thinking for Educators. (n.d.). What is computational thinking? Retrieved from https://computationalthinkingcourse.withgoogle.com/unit

6. References: Google for Education. (2012, June 22). Solving problems at Google using computational thinking [video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVVB5RQfYxk

7. References: Yadav, A., Hong, H., & Stephenson, C. (2016). Computational thinking for all: Pedagogical approaches to embedding 21st century problem solving in K-12 classrooms. Tech Trends, 60, (565-568). Doi:10.1007/s11528-016-0087-7