USING SCRATCH TO TEACH PUPILS COMPUTER PROGRAMMING

Abstract

The researchers’ main focus was to find a solution to problems identified. We found and suggested that computer programming should be taught from the primary or elementary school level to aid computational thinking, logical reasoning, and problem solving skills in order to prepare them cognitively and inculcating in them the desire to pursue a carrier in computer science programme or programming course. It imparts students with some basic knowledge before they get to the tertiary institution. This basic programming concept when handled proprerly, can reduce the difficulty rate and the drop out level in the computer science department at the university. Introducing programming or coding to pupils at the primary school level is a good idea and is becoming universal but the method or approach in delivering computer programming is quite difficult for the pupils to grasp. Therefore, there would be a need to suggest a simple learnable visual block-based programming environment. The researchers supported the use of Scratch programming environment as one of the best methods known to introduce programming to pupils. This research focuses on an important matter: how to teach pupils basic concepts of computer programming using one of the commonly best-used programming environment and a new approach.The introduction of this approach and environment is easy and also effective in improving computational, logical reasoning, and problem solving skills. The research shows that pupils were able to learn to use the scratch environment and also created projects for simple storytelling and animation on their own.