Boolean Expressions and Conditional Statements

Posted May 18, 2017 by sgibbs

Reflect on using Boolean Expressions and Conditional Statements.  Post your reflection here:

Comments

Submitted by sircollins88 on Sun, 06/11/2017 - 06:44 · Permalink

I think the nesting of conditional statements is one of the concepts students struggle with the most. We spend a lot of time working backwards through their thought process when creating the code.

Submitted by eso on Tue, 06/13/2017 - 21:43 · Permalink

When I first started editing my code, I ran into the problem that sircollins88 pointed out: I initially nested my conditional statements inside one another, but caught myself as I was moving the blocks. 

This would be important to point out to students, or to let them discover on their own. 

Also, this logic is exactly the same with Python and I would expect with all other programming languages. The only difference would be the syntax across platforms. 

Submitted by kcwgtt on Tue, 06/20/2017 - 23:10 · Permalink

I have found logic to be a challenging concept to teach to middle school students. This is because the decision they make everyday have not be called as using logic. When students choose a certain color shirt over a different color shirt is using logic. Conditional statements, I have found, can be easily connected to students lives because much of their decision making uses conditional statements. Boolean expressions and conditional statements can be taught effectively to middle schoolers, as long as a real-world connection is used to relate the logic to the students' daily lives.

Submitted by jsimpson on Thu, 06/29/2017 - 19:53 · Permalink

My students have only used conditional statements when programming their robots (which required copy and paste) and using blockly in Hour of Code only.  I anticipate that this will be a bit difficult for some students.  I am hoping to use students who master coding to help out with the other students.  I too started nesting all of my conditions together and then saw my mistake before finishing.  I also agree with kcwgtt that middle school students can learn this, it will just take practice and an understanding that what the students program is what will happen

Submitted by person11d on Sat, 08/05/2017 - 03:00 · Permalink

I feel that having the sentence frames of If... then... structure will help students when creating their logic codes. Transfering that phrase into daily discussions can help students develop that logic foundation. I'm excited to experience teaching this to my students this year.