The first half of the class was spent teaching the kids about the basics of computer
programming with the goal of teaching the students how a computer reads instructions. We
demonstrated this via a "making a bagel" activity. In this activity the students decided as a
class what instructions a computer would need to follow to make a bagel, from beginning to
end. These instructions were written on the board and the "computer" (Valerie, a teacher) read
the instructions and acted accordingly. The students learned that objects and some commands
need to be defined, and that a computer reads instructions very literally. The second half of
the class was used to explore systems modeling using Vensim. The class together built an SIR
model and a medication model.