Computer Science

‘Algorithms’ is a core CS concept included in the K-12 CS standards, yet student challenges with understanding different aspects of algorithms are still not well documented, especially for younger students. This paper describes an approach to decompose the broad middle-school ‘algorithms’ standard into finer grained learning targets, develop formative assessment tasks aligned with the learning targets, and use the tasks to explore student understanding of, and challenges with, the various aspects of the standard.

'Algorithms’ is a core CS concept included in the K-12 CS learning standards, yet student challenges with understanding and using algorithms are still not well documented. This paper describes an approach to decompose the broad middle-school ‘algorithms’ standard into finer grained learning targets, develop formative assessment tasks aligned with the fine-grained learning targets, and use the tasks to explore student understanding of and challenges with the various concepts underlying the standard.

This report takes stock of what we currently know as well as what we need to know to make classroom assessment maximally beneficial for the teaching and learning of STEM subject matter in K–12 classrooms.