research-article

Open access

Second-grade Students’ Use of Visual Programming to Learn Multiplication: Leveraging the Concept of Iteration

Authors:

Jessica Shumway, and

John EdwardsAuthors Info & Claims

ACE '22: Proceedings of the 24th Australasian Computing Education Conference

February 2022

Pages 76 - 84

https://doi.org/10.1145/3511861.3511870

Published: 14 February 2022 Publication History

All formats PDF

Abstract

The multiplication algorithms that we teach elementary students are designed to be efficient, but the conceptual understanding of these algorithms is usually hidden behind this efficiency. For example, one intuitive meaning of multiplication is that of iterated addition. In this paper, we investigate the ways a visual programming activity leverages the concept of iteration to learn multiplication. We report results of a mixed-methods study on second-grade students’ use of visual programming and iteration to set up and solve multiplication story problems. We found qualitative evidence that participants gained improved intuition of multiplication as repeated addition and that they made important connections between the programming blocks and multiplication story problems.

References

[1]

[1] [n. d.]. http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/vlibrary.html

[2]

[n. d.]. About. https://scratch.mit.edu/about

[3]

[n. d.]. About. https://www.scratchjr.org/about/info

[4]

[n. d.]. Blockly. https://developers.google.com/blockly

[5]

2010. Common core state standards. http://www.corestandards.org

[6]

2010. Common core state standards for mathematics. http://www.corestandards.org/Math/

[7]

Marina U. Bers, Carina González-González, and Mª Belén Armas–Torres. 2019. Coding as a playground: Promoting positive learning experiences in childhood classrooms. Computers & Education 138 (2019), 130–145. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2019.04.013

Digital Library

[8]

Douglas H Clements. 2000. From exercises and tasks to problems and projects. The Journal of Mathematical Behavior 19, 1 (2000), 9–47. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0732-3123(00)00036-5

[9]

G.Fessakis, E. Gouli, and E. Mavroudi. 2013. Problem solving by 5-6 years old kindergarten children in a computer programming environment: a case study. Computers and Education 63 (2013), 87–97.

Digital Library

[10]

Mark Guzdial. 1994. Software-Realized Scaffolding to Facilitate Programming for Science Learning. Interactive learning environments 4, 1 (1994), 1–44.

[11]

Megan Hamilton, Jody Clarke-Midura, Jessica F. Shumway, and Victor R. Lee. 2019. An Emerging Technology Report on Computational Toys in Early Childhood. Technology, Knowledge and Learning 25, 1 (2019), 213–224. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10758-019-09423-8

[12]

Sze Yee Lye and Joyce Hwee Ling Koh. 2014. Review on teaching and learning of computational thinking through programming: What is next for k-12. Computers in Human Behavior 41 (2014), 51–61.

Digital Library

[13]

Patricia S. Moyer-Packenham, Christina W. Lommatsch, Kristy Litster, Jill Ashby, Emma K. Bullock, Allison L. Roxburgh, Jessica F. Shumway, Emily Speed, Benjamin Covington, Christine Hartmann, Jody Clarke-Midura, Joel Skaria, Arla Westensckow, Beth MacDonald, Jürgen Symanzik, and Kerry Jordan. 2019. How design features in digital math games support learning and mathematics connections. Computers in Human Behavior 91 (2019), 316–332.

[14]

Hanna Palmér. 2017. Programming in Preschool - With a Focus on Learning Mathematics. International Research in Early Childhood Education 8, 1 (2017), 75–87. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1173690

[15]

Stamatios Papadakis, Michail Kalogiannakis, and Nicholas Zaranis. 2016. Developing fundamental programming concepts and computational thinking with ScratchJr in preschool education: a case study. Mobile Learning and organisation 10, 3 (2016), 187–202.

Digital Library

[16]

S.A. Papert. 2020. Mindstorms: Children, Computers, And Powerful Ideas. Basic Books. https://books.google.com/books?id=nDjRDwAAQBAJ

[17]

Tony D Ryff. 2018. The Use of Cursive Writing in a Digital Age: A Mixed-Methods Analysis of the Differences between Modes of Transcription in Private Schools. Ph. D. Dissertation. ProQuest LLC.

[18]

T. Rees Shapiro. 2013. Cursive handwriting is disappearing from public schools. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/cursive-handwriting-disappearing-from-public-schools/2013/04/04/215862e0-7d23-11e2-a044-676856536b40_story.html

[19]

Bruce Sherin. 2001. A Comparison of Programming Languages and Algebraic notation as Expressive Languages for Physics. International Journal of Computers for Mathematical Learning 6 (2001), 1–61.

[20]

Jessica F. Shumway, Jody Clarke-Midura, Victor R. Lee, Megan M. Hamilton, and Chloe Baczuk. 2019. Coding Toys in Kindergarten. Teaching Children Mathematics TCM 25, 5 (2019), 314 – 317. https://doi.org/10.5951/teacchilmath.25.5.0314

[21]

Amanda Sullivan and Marina Umaschi Bers. 2016. Robotics in the early childhood classroom: learning outcomes from an 8-week robotics curriculum in pre-kindergarten through second grade. International Journal of Technology and Design Education 26 (2016), 3–20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10798-015-9304-5

[22]

José-Manuel Sáez-López, Marcos Román-González, and Esteban Vázquez-Cano. 2016. Visual programming languages integrated across the curriculum in elementary school: A two year case study using ‘Scratch’ in five schools. Computers and Education 97 (2016), 129–141.

Digital Library

Cited By

Lesner TSutherland MLussier CClarke B(2023)Using the Number Line to Build Understanding of Fraction ArithmeticIntervention in School and Clinic10.1177/1053451223115687859:3(191-198)Online publication date: 15-Mar-2023
https://doi.org/10.1177/10534512231156878
Chen TSu ILee J(2022)Case Study: Design Strategies for Enabling Visual Application Blocks of Bluetooth LibraryIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2022.317531610(52630-52654)Online publication date: 2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3175316

Index Terms

Second-grade Students’ Use of Visual Programming to Learn Multiplication: Leveraging the Concept of Iteration

Index terms have been assigned to the content through auto-classification.

Recommendations

Using A Visual Programming Environment and Custom Robots to Learn C Programming and K-12 STEM Concepts
FabLearn '16: Proceedings of the 6th Annual Conference on Creativity and Fabrication in Education

This paper presents a robot-Visual Programming Environment (VPE) interface that can support K-12 students to learn science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) concepts. Specifically, we employ Google's Blockly VPE to construct a blocks-based ...
Read More
A new way of teaching programming skills to K-12 students

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of programming with code.org site on reflective thinking skills towards problem solving.Programming with code.org site did not cause any differences in reflective thinking skills toward problem ...
Read More
The applicability of the visual programming language LabVIEW to large real-world applications
VL '95: Proceedings of the 11th International IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages

Graphical programming languages allow a natural, intuitive man-machine interaction. As a result, graphical programming has gained much popularity over the past several years, primarily because many scientists and engineers have experienced improvements ...
Read More

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences

ACE '22: Proceedings of the 24th Australasian Computing Education Conference

February 2022

200 pages

ISBN:9781450396431

DOI:10.1145/3511861

Editors:
Judy Sheard
Monash University
,
Paul Denny
The University of Auckland

Copyright © 2022 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 14 February 2022

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article
Research
Refereed limited

Conference

ACE '22

ACE '22: Australasian Computing Education Conference

February 14 - 18, 2022

Virtual Event, Australia

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 161 of 359 submissions, 45%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

2
Total Citations
View Citations
227
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)131
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)19

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Lesner TSutherland MLussier CClarke B(2023)Using the Number Line to Build Understanding of Fraction ArithmeticIntervention in School and Clinic10.1177/1053451223115687859:3(191-198)Online publication date: 15-Mar-2023
https://doi.org/10.1177/10534512231156878
Chen TSu ILee J(2022)Case Study: Design Strategies for Enabling Visual Application Blocks of Bluetooth LibraryIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2022.317531610(52630-52654)Online publication date: 2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3175316

View Options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

HTML Format

View this article in HTML Format.

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents