[Edu-sig] Age groups

[Gerrit Holl]

John Glossner wrote on 949642092:
>   1) Math illiterate (any age but probably under 5)

You should not try to teach them programming.

>   2) Early Education (5-7 year old)

I think it's still to early to teach kids who can't read programming.

>   3) Elementary Education (8-10 year old)

You can start here. The concept of variables, lists and functions can
be explained. Dictionairies too, I think. Classes will probably be only
for the very smart ones.

>   4) Middle school (11-13 year old)

I learned Python at this age. I found it difficult and reread things
a lot. Finally, I understood it. You can teach those kids much about
classes, but multiple inheritance is more difficult. I don't think
they'll understand map, reduce, filter, lambda and multiple inheritance.
I don't understand reduce either. Why and when to use it?

>   5) Senior high (14-16 year old)

There's already enough documentation for this ones,
but to encourage them it's needed to use alice like things.
Translations are also useful.

>   6) Advanced Senior high (16-18 year old)

It's not needed to give them extra documentation. They know English
and can make their way perfectly.

> Since I currently have 2/6/8/10 year olds I cover a lot
> of the categories. I would be interested in helping
> develop free and open curriculum for these age groups.

We shouldn't try to teach kids who can't read yet to learn programming.
Turtle graphics are also harder than you might think for these ones:
there must be a window for "turtle.right(5)", because they don't
know about degrees yet.

regards,
Gerrit.

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