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3.3 SUGGESTED SYLLABUS 37
— Students "are listening to" several loop skeletons while they keep their
eyes on the slow-motion running of the program generated by the code cre¬
ator module. It would be useful to analyse the following loop skeletons
(see Figure 3.5).
— Students are asked to recognize some unknown loop skeletons only by
hearing their “piano accompaniment”.
— Students are following, with their eyes and ears, the running of some
well-known basic algorithms in the dialogue box of the run_code module.
For example, how does a searching algorithm sound? And what about a
sorting algorithm? If, for instance, students remember the sound pattern
of sorting algorithms, they would not try to create a single loop.
— Students are listening to the ‘piano accompaniment” of the algorithm for
different inputs.
— Students are asked to “drum in” divers loop skeletons. This is a very im¬
portant stage of the syllabus. As the pupils in New Mexico schools feel the
fractions in their bones due to the music and dance, our students should
get to the point where the rhythm of algorithms rings in them. They reach
this stage as a result of using their fingers in the manner of a pianist to
“type” again and again the loop skeleton of the different algorithms. This
phase of the method can be applied even if no computers are accessible.
Firstly, the teacher and then the students can “drum” the rhythm of the
loop skeletons, using their hands and legs.
— Algorithms may contain typical errors. Students are asked to compare the
wrong sound sequences with the “piano accompaniment” of the correct
algorithms.
— A certain loop skeleton is selected, and problems with the respective skel¬
eton are analysed. Students are also asked to suggest adequate problems
(preferably real-word problems).
Han
Figure 3.5. Loop skeletons