Search the California Content Standards

Standard:
Decompose the steps needed to solve a problem into a sequence of instructions.

Descriptive Statement:
Decomposition is the act of breaking down tasks into simpler tasks. For example, students could break down the steps needed to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, to brush their teeth, to draw a shape, to move a character across the screen, or to solve a level of a coding app. In a visual programming environment, students could break down the steps needed to draw a shape. (CA CCSS for Mathematics K.G.5, 1.G.1, 2.G.1) Alternatively, students could decompose the planning of a birthday party into tasks such as: 1) Decide when and where it should be, 2) List friends and family to invite, 3) Send the invitations, 4) Bake a cake, 5) Decorate, etc.

Standard:
Develop plans that describe a program’s sequence of events, goals, and expected outcomes.

Descriptive Statement:
Creating a plan for what a program will do clarifies the steps that will be needed to create the program and can be used to check if a program runs as expected. Students create a planning document to illustrate their program's sequence of events, goals, and expected outcomes of what their program will do. Planning documents could include a story map, a storyboard, or a sequential graphic organizer, to illustrate their program's sequence of events, goals, and expected outcomes of what their program will do. Students at this level may complete the planning process with help from the teacher. For example, students could create a storyboard or timeline that represents a family's history, leading to their current location of residence. Students could then create a plan for a program that animates the story of family locations. (HSS 2.1.1) (CA CCSS for ELA/Literacy W.K.3, W.1.3, W.2.3)

Standard:
Give attribution when using the ideas and creations of others while developing programs.

Descriptive Statement:
Computing makes it easy to reuse and remix others' creations, and this comes with a level of responsibility. Students credit artifacts that were created by others, such as pictures, music, and code. Credit could be given orally if presenting their work to the class, or in writing if sharing work on a class blog or website. Proper attribution at this stage does not require formal citation, such as in a bibliography or works cited document. For example, when creating an animation of the sun, moon, and stars using a blocks-based language, students could draw their own sun and use an image of the moon and stars from a website or a teammate. When students present the model to the class, they can orally give credit to the website or peer for the contributions. (CA CCSS for ELA/Literacy SL.K.5, SL.1.5, SL.2.5) (NGSS.1-ESS1-1) (CA Model School Library Standards 2.3.b, 2.4.2.a)

Standard:
Describe the steps taken and choices made during the iterative process of program development.

Descriptive Statement:
Program developers make choices and iterate to continually refine their product. At this stage, students explain or write about the goals and expected outcomes of the programs they create and the choices that they made when creating programs. Students could use coding journals, discussions with a teacher, class presentations, or blogs. For example, students could use a combination of images, verbal reflections, a physical model, and/or written text to show the step-by-step process taken to develop a program such as cutting and pasting coding commands into a journal, using manipulatives that represent different commands and control structures, and taking screenshots of code and adding to a digital journal. This iterative process could be documented via a speech, journal, one on one conference with teacher or peer, small group conference, or blog. (CA CCSS for ELA/Literacy SL.K.5, SL.1.5, SL.2.5) (CA NGSS: K-2-ETS1.2)

Standard:
Decompose problems into smaller, manageable tasks which may themselves be decomposed.

Descriptive Statement:
Decomposition is the act of breaking down tasks into simpler tasks. This manages complexity in the problem solving and program development process. For example, students could create an animation to represent a story they have written. Students write a story and then break it down into different scenes. For each scene, they would select a background, place characters, and program actions in that scene. (CA CCSS for ELA/Literacy W.3.3, W.4.3, W.5.3) Alternatively, students could create a program to allow classmates to present data collected in an experiment. For example, if students collected rain gauge data once per week for 3 months, students could break down the program tasks: 1) ask the user to input 12 weeks' worth of data, 2) process the data (e.g., add the first four entries to calculate the rain amount for month 1, convert to metric system measurements), and 3) direct the creation or resizing of objects (e.g., one rectangular chart bar for each month) to represent the total number of rainfall for that month. (CA NGSS: 3-ETS-1-2) (CA CCSS for Mathematics 3.MD.2)

Standard:
Observe intellectual property rights and give appropriate attribution when creating, remixing, or combining programs.

Descriptive Statement:
Intellectual property rights can vary by country, but copyright laws give the creator of a work a set of rights and prevents others from copying the work and using it in ways that they may not like. Students consider common licenses that place limitations or restrictions on the use of others' work, such as images and music downloaded from the Internet. When incorporating the work of others, students attribute the work. At this level, students could give attribution by including credits or links directly in their programs, code comments, or separate project pages. For example, when making a program to model the life cycle of a butterfly, students could modify and reuse an existing program that describes the life cycle of a frog. Based on their research, students could identify and use Creative Commons-licensed or public domain images and sounds of caterpillars and butterflies. Students give attribution by properly citing the source of the original piece as necessary. (CA NGSS: 3-LS-1-1) (CA CCSS for ELA/Literacy W.3.8, W.4.8, W.5.8) Alternatively, when creating a program explaining the structure of the United States goverment, students find Creative Commons-licensed or public domain images to represent the three branches of government and attribute ownership of the images appropriately. If students find and incorporate an audio file of a group playing part of the national anthem, they appropriately give attribution on the project page. (HSS.3.4.4)

Standard:
Describe choices made during program development using code comments, presentations, and demonstrations.

Descriptive Statement:
People communicate about their code to help others understand and use their programs. Explaining one's design choices gives others a better understanding of one's work. Students may explain their step-by-step process of creating a program in a presentation or demonstration of their personal code journals. They describe how comments within code organize thought and process during the develpment of the program. For example, students could describe the decision to have the score in a game flash when it can be rounded to 100 by writing a comment in the code. (CA CCSS for Mathematics 3.NBT.1) Alternatively, students could present their overall program development experience and justify choices made by using storyboards, annotated images, videos, and/or journal entries. (CA CCSS for ELA/Literacy SL.3.4, SL.4.4, SL.5.4, SL.3.5, SL.4.5, SL.5.5) (CA NGSS: 3-5-ETS1-1, 3.5-ETS1-2, 3.5-ETS1-3)

Standard:
Use data to highlight and/or propose relationships, predict outcomes, or communicate ideas.

Descriptive Statement:
The accuracy of data analysis is related to how the data is represented. Inferences or predictions based on data are less likely to be accurate if the data is insufficient, incomplete, or inaccurate or if the data is incorrect in some way. Additionally, people select aspects and subsets of data to be transformed, organized, and categorized. Students should be able to refer to data when communicating an idea, in order to highlight and/or propose relationships, predict outcomes, highlight different views and/or communicate insights and ideas. For example, students can be provided a scenario in which they are city managers who have a specific amount of funds to improve a city in California. Students can collect data of a city concerning land use, vegetation, wildlife, climate, population density, services and transportation (HSS.4.1.5) to determine and present what area needs to be focused on to improve a problem. Students can compare their data and planned use of funds with peers, clearly communicating or predict outcomes based on data collected. (CA CCCS for ELA/Literacy SL.3.1, SL.4.1, SL.5.1) Alternatively, students could record the temperature at noon each day to show that temperatures are higher in certain months of the year. If temperatures are not recorded on non-school days or are recorded incorrectly, the data would be incomplete and ideas being communicated could be inaccurate. Students may also record the day of the week on which the data was collected, but this would have no relevance to whether temperatures are higher or lower. In order to have sufficient and accurate data on which to communicate the idea, students might use data provided by a governmental weather agency. (CA NGSS: 3-ESS2-1)

Standard:
Decompose problems and subproblems into parts to facilitate the design, implementation, and review of programs.

Descriptive Statement:
Decomposition facilitates program development by allowing students to focus on one piece at a time (e.g., getting input from the user, processing the data, and displaying the result to the user). Decomposition also enables different students to work on different parts at the same time. Students break down (decompose) problems into subproblems, which can be further broken down to smaller parts. Students could create an arcade game, with a title screen, a game screen, and a win/lose screen with an option to play the game again. To do this, students need to identify subproblems that accompany each screen (e.g., selecting an avatar goes in the title screen, events for controlling character action and scoring goes in the game screen, and displaying final and high score and asking whether to play again goes in the win/lose screen). Alternatively, students could decompose the problem of calculating and displaying class grades. Subproblems might include: accept input for students grades on various assignments, check for invalid grade entries, calculate per assignment averages, calculate per student averages, and display histograms of student scores for each assignment. (CA CCSS for Mathematics 6.RP.3c, 6.SP.4, 6.SP.5)

Standard:
Incorporate existing code, media, and libraries into original programs, and give attribution.

Descriptive Statement:
Building on the work of others enables students to produce more interesting and powerful creations. Students use portions of code, algorithms, digital media, and/or data created by others in their own programs and websites. They give attribution to the original creators to acknowledge their contributions. For example, when creating a side-scrolling game, students may incorporate portions of code that create a realistic jump movement from another person's game, and they may also import Creative Commons-licensed images to use in the background. Alternatively, when creating a website to demonstrate their knowledge of historical figures from the Civil War, students may use a professionally-designed template and public domain images of historical figures. (HSS.8.10.5) Additionally, students could import libraries and connect to web application program interfaces (APIs) to make their own programming processes more efficient and reduce the number of bugs (e.g., to check whether the user input is a valid date, to input the current temperature from another city).