Computational Thinking in Middle School Science

Abstract

We designed a lesson about Urban Heat Islands (UHI) that features Snap! programming challenges. The lesson is designed to enable students to leverage their computational and scientific understanding synergistically to further their learning in each area. The lesson also features fictitious automated college student mentors to enhance students’ sense of belonging as they engage in the programming challenges. We report on students’ level of success with three increasingly complex programming challenges as well as their level of understanding of how UHI occur after completing the challenges. We also provide brief case studies to illustrate how students used their scientific knowledge to debug their code and solve the challenges. Despite varied success with the challenges, most students were able to demonstrate an understanding of UHI. Many reported feeling interested and nervous when starting the programming challenges and shared they did not feel alone after engaging with the college student mentors.