Research On The Development And Implementation Of Scratch Programming Mathematics Curriculum Based On Computational Thinking

Technology has changed the ways we live and think,with science,engineering,medicine and business increasingly relying on mathematics and computer simulations.Advanced technology is an important indicator of a country's core competitiveness,and its growth is inseparable from an emerging concept – computational thinking.Primary school students shoulder the important task of promoting the strategy of building a strong country in science and technology and are the backbone of realizing the dream of science and technology.Therefore,the computational thinking education in primary schools has far-reaching significance.Although computational thinking originated from computer science,it is not confined to it.Its collision with mathematics reflects the integration of STEM education and reveals its differences from mathematical thinking.Students with computational thinking can identify the laws of data,express problems in abstract forms such as model or simulation,and automate the solving process with the help of the computational performance of the computer.The invisible nature of computational thinking increases the difficulty of training.The childlike Scratch gets rid of the cumbersome syntax,lowers the threshold,and cuts out the side parts to get right to the heart of it.Therefore,this research selects Scratch as a teaching platform to design a mathematics course based on computational thinking,aiming to cultivate the computational thinking ability of primary school students and improve their understanding of mathematics.This research has two main questions:(1)After learning the Scratch Programming Mathematics Curriculum,whether the 21 fourth to sixth graders' computational thinking has changed?(2)Is there any change in how the 21 students in grades four to six perceive math learning through the Scratch Programming Mathematics Curriculum?To this end,this paper systematically sorts out the definition and research status of computational thinking,and defines the core elements of computational thinking: data thinking,decomposition thinking,abstract thinking,algorithmic thinking and systematic thinking.According to the characteristics of computational thinking,the PBL teaching model and the ‘5Es' teaching method of Celia Hoyles' team were adopted to design Scratch programming mathematics course based on computational thinking by the actual situation of learners.It analyzes the situation of learners,designs a Scratch programming math course based on computational thinking,and expounds the content and purpose of each activity.It also takes ‘the address of the party' and ‘game problem' as examples to explain the specific process of teaching practice.Finally,the feasibility and effectiveness of the instructional design are verified by comparing the two groups of data of the computational thinking test and the questionnaire of mathematics learning concept.The result shows that this course has effectively improved the students' computational thinking ability,especially the decomposition thinking,algorithmic thinking and systematic thinking.In addition,students' views of mathematics learning are also influenced unconsciously,and their cognition of mathematics and the learning of mathematics has been significantly improved.