AN APPROACH TO INTEGRATE COMPUTATIONAL THINKING IN THE EARLY YEARS OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
Computational Thinking, Elementary School, Unplugged Computing, Meaningful Learning.
The present research aims to propose a guide for introducing Computational Thinking in the early years of Elementary School. The guide comes from the author's experience in teaching to children from a public school in Natal/RN. This experience, together with a literature survey, allowed the consolidation of a group of guidelines for unplugged and gamified activities based on theoretical-practical concepts coming from Meaningful Learning, Constructionism and Paulo Freire's ideas that prioritize local reality, daily life, interest and students' prior knowledge. Workshops targetting teacher's training were held in order to evaluate the pedagogical approach from the point of view of other teachers, as well as to have a perspective about teaching of Computational Thinking in the context of early years of Elementary School.