Context of the Standard

At school and at home, students engage in step-by-step activities on a routine basis.  These may include such activities as brushing their teeth or preparing to leave school at the end of the school day.  When students document these step-by-step instructions they are creating algorithms.  Sometimes there are repeating steps in a task, and students can create a loop in their algorithm to indicate that repeating pattern. As an example, walking forward 10 steps and turning could be repeated 4 times to illustrate a square. A loop allows the core of the pattern to be written once instead of 4 times, shortening the overall length of the algorithm.

Algorithms can be created with or without computers. Computers follow precise sequences of instructions that automate tasks. A precise sequence of instructions that a computer uses is referred to as a program.  Programs are sequential and may contain loops. Unplugged activities can be found at sites such as CS Unplugged.

Essential Skills

Essential Questions

Essential Vocabulary

Students should demonstrate these skills:

• Individually and/or as a class, construct a sequence of steps to accomplish an activity.
• Identify a section of repeated actions to replace with a loop.
• Given a sequence of steps that include a loop, predict the next step in the sequence.

Students should investigate these concepts:

• When would a loop be used when describing a sequence of steps?
• What is an example of a daily task that includes a loop?
• (Given a pattern of numbers or images): How can you predict what should come next in this series?

Students should be introduced to these concepts:

• Loop
• Pattern matching
• Repeat
• Sequence