Insights from students' reasoning about probability when they design their own Scratch games

International audienceMaking modeling, generalization and justification an explicit focus of instruction can help to make big ideas available to all students at all ages (Carpenter & Romberg, 2004). Because mathematical models focus on structural characteristics of phenomena (e.g. patterns, interactions, and relationships among elements) rather than surface features (e.g. biological, physical, or artistic attributes), they are powerful tools in predicting the behavior of complex systems (Lesh & Harel, 2003). Based on this assumption, we attempted to enhance students' (aged between 8 to 13 years old) reasoning about probability by asking them to design a computer game for modeling probabilistic ideas. Students were introduced to the block-based programming language Scratch 2.0, and used it to create their own games. The findings show that the idea of chance had an important role in their games and that they expressed many probabilistic ideas while they were designing and playing their game