Teaching Computational Thinking to a Student with Attention Deficit Through Programming Felippe Fernandes da Silva Department of Informatics State University of Maringa Maringa, Brazil felippefernandes10@yahoo.com.br Linnyer Beatrys Ruiz Aylon Department of Informatics State University of Maringa Maringa, Brazil linnyer@gmail.com Daniela Eloise Flˆ or Communication and Information Department Federal Institute of Paran´ a Paranavai, Brazil daniela.flor@ifpr.edu.br Abstract—This research-to-practice full paper deals with the difficulty that it is possible to teach computational thinking through the teaching of algorithms and programming to a person with ADD. We propose approaches to teach algorithms, knowing that it is a difficult task for many teachers. Likewise, inspiring the student’s interest also has its difficulties. The Brazilian Computer Society (SBC) understands that it is fundamental and strategic for Brazil that computer content is taught in basic education. Considering the 4.0 education of a connected generation, the thinking of computer education is relevant to the construction of youth and adult education. When we include people with ADD, this challenge is not trivial. This work presents a case study carried out with a high school student who has ADD and the techniques that were used to teach him to program to maintain his interest in the area. The method used was divided into three stages: Computer Discovery (1); Introduction to computational thinking through programming (2); Learn by Doing, in line with real-world problem solving using pair programming technique and challenge-based learning strategy (3). In order to investigate the effectiveness of the developed strategies, an experimental case study was carried out with a student who has ADD. The student was introduced to the content and approaches for 34 weeks, totaling 204 hours. The student presented a strong indication of learning and will forever have the ability of computational thinking to program and develop their applications. Index Terms—Computational Thinking, DDA, Active Method- ologies, Education 4.0, Teaching Programming. I. I NTRODUCTION The impact of technological evolution on the life of the contemporary citizen has brought different challenges and uncertainties. This is because known and other unknown skills and abilities will be essential in personal and professional relationships in the near future. Education is the link that unites society with these new demands and Computational Thinking (PC), in turn, is seen as a fundamental skill for the next generations. Computational Thinking has been popularized, among other ways, through the teaching of algorithms and programming [11], as a strategy that provides necessary cognitive resources for problem solving, across all areas of knowledge. It is one of the contents suggested by the initiatives of insertion of Computing in Basic Education and several works have reported successful educational interventions with students of different levels of education [3]. Thus, an inclusive perspective of this process, to contem- plate students with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), is essen- tial. People with ADD have insufficient Executive Functions (EF). Executive functions are a set of skills necessary for school success and are transversal to any type of learning. The understanding of executive functions and how they can be ensured during the knowledge acquisition process of a student with ADD, guided the development of this research. This paper presents a case study where a sequence of methods were applied to teach computational thinking to a high school student who has ADD and this learning will help in other daily routines, considering that the student will better organize his way of thinking as we develop his cognitive dysfunctions [19]. The remainder of this paper is structured to present, in Section II, concepts and related works that supported the research. Section III details the work methodology. Then, Section IV presents the validation of the proposed method. The impact on the student’s life is discussed in Section V and the conclusions and future work can be found in Section VI. II. RELATED WORKS The computer as a learning tool has been explored by Seymour Papert since the 1970s. Over time, several researchers have contributed to strengthening the relationship between education and computing. Jeannete Wing [10], recovered the term Computational Thinking and reframed the idea by cor- relating cognitive processes and tools common to computer scientists with a set of efficient skills that can be used to solve problems in various contexts. Currently, research groups, social institutions and companies around the world have expanded the discussions and movements that seek the approximation of computing to basic education, including the Brazilian Computer Society (SBC) [6]. There are different approaches to Computational Thinking [18]. In this research, we adopted the perspective that consoli- dates computer science as an indispensable area of knowledge for future generations. More specifically, we opted for the bias of the contents of algorithms and programming following Denning’s [14] interpretation that the skills involved in the involved in the creation of computer programs favor mental training applicable to problems in other contexts.