Informatics education at the lower school levels is custom-
arily interpreted as dexterity with the ICTs. However, in our view the
importance of such operational abilities has been overstated, whereas the
underlying learning ob jectives and the actual impact on children’s intel-
lectual development are still to be clarified. In this paper we consider a
different educational perspective, whose primary aim is to provide chil-
dren with appropriate mental scaffolding for computer science concepts
and methodologies, many of which will be learned only later. Rather
than exposing the pupils to a broad span of computing ideas, we essen-
tially focus on representational codes and their potential to disclose new
information by simple formal manipulations. Our approach is inspired
by the early historical developments of ideas and tools, that allows us:
(i) to propose engaging tasks within a background portrayed in the nar-
rative register; (ii) to draw links with the topics of the specific history
and mathematics syllabi; (iii) to reflect, at a meta-level, on the cognitive
demands of relevant cultural achievements and on their pedagogical im-
plications. After outlining our experience with pupils aged 6 and 9-10,
we will briefly discuss children’s sub jective perception and feedback, in
particular as to the retention of the material learned.
