If I were to say the word abstraction, what comes to your mind?
Abstraction is a process that is, well, abstract! It may seem a bit strange or confusing, like first looking at one of Picasso's famous works of art. But what can come from staring at that piece of artwork is beautiful and helps us to understand a phenomenon just a little bit better. That's abstraction! Removing much of the "other stuff" from a big, complicated idea so that we can focus on just one small aspect. Just like artists, writers, and scientists abstract ideas, computer scientists use this computational thinking skill often. As us educators help our students develop their computational thinking skill set, abstraction is an important part of the list. Our students are already using abstractions and even doing it themselves. For example, you are teaching a math class and ask at the end of a lesson, "Are there any questions?" Naturally, kids are curious and have lots of questions! Knowing to only ask questions about the math lesson you taught means that student is abstracting just what needs to be focused on in that moment. There will be time for writing or science or "what's for lunch" questions another time. (Now some littles are still learning this concept and we elementary teachers get all sorts of random questions after a math lesson! That just goes to show that as students grow and age, they're capable of developing this skill.) Here are some ideas for introducing, using, and teaching abstraction in the classroom:
But simply defining abstraction or asking students to use it isn't enough. The key to teaching students abstraction is to have come up with the abstraction themselves AND reflect on it. How did they choose what to abstract from a diagram, story, etc? How do they know it's a good abstraction of that math problem or that text? How does the abstraction lead to a deeper understanding of what they're studying? Asking students to reflect on this process of computational thinking helps them with metacognition and being critical thinkers. Taking it one step further, students could use these abstractions to create a computer program that uses their mathematical formula for calculating area, perimeter, etc. Computers rely on abstractions and a good abstraction relies on the power of computational thinking.
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Hi there!I'm Sarah! I have a passion for powerful teaching and lifelong learning. I am a 4th grade teacher turned instructional designer, and this is my blog documenting the journey. Click here to get in touch with me. Archives
February 2021
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