Teach your Class to Code with our Free Decomposition Activity!
Learning to code doesn’t have to be boring. Put your students computational thinking skills into practice with our new unplugged coding activity: Who Is It!
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Put your Computational Thinking Skills into Practice!
Decomposition is one of the four cornerstones of computational thinking, which involves taking a complex problem and breaking it down into smaller, more manageable parts. It is a fundamental step in the problem-solving process, and is therefore a vital skill for students to learn!
- This unplugged coding activity allows students to practice their computational thinking skills in a way that is fun, engaging and doesn’t involve staring at a screen!
- At first glance, figuring out their partner’s chosen character may seem like a difficult task. However, once your students identify the smaller steps they can take to find the solution e.g. recognising common characteristics and asking appropriate questions, the task is much more manageable.
- From completing the activity, students learn that breaking down tasks into smaller parts is a much more efficient way of problem-solving.
How to Play
Step 1: Set-up
Print out the worksheets for your class and put them into partners. Ask your students to cut out the character cards and place them in a four-by-four grid on their desk. They must then choose a character from the Mystery Deck (in secret!) before the game begins.
Step 2: Ask Away!
To play the game, your students must take it in turns asking eachother “yes” or “no” questions (e.g. “is your character smiling?”) to eliminate characters. Students must turn the eliminated character cards face down on the desk and write down the questions that they have already asked onto their worksheet.
Step 3: Make your Guess
Keep playing until there is only one character card that hasn’t been eliminated. This should be the character that their partner chose. Now they can make their guess! The first person to correctly guess their partner’s character is the winner. Hooray!