CaTaPuLT Clubs

If you'd like to see some of our Lesson Plans for 9-12 week clubs.

If you work with 4th/5th graders, find out how to have UW-Madison students lead a weekly CaTaPuLT club at your site.

If you are a UW-Madison student, learn about CS 402, a service-learing course that gives you the skills to co-lead a CaTaPuLT club.

If you are curious, find out where we've run CaTaPuLT clubs in the past, other outreach performed by our group, and our future plans.

Computer science (CS) is revolutionizing all of our lives. Innovations in computation drive our economy and underlie almost all our advances in science and engineering. To flourish in today's world, everyone needs to understand not only how to effectively use computers and technology, but also computational thinking. Computational thinking involves specifying solutions so precisely that even computers can follow the directions. Although computational thinking is a fundamental skill for everyone, not just for computer scientists, most individuals are not exposed to it.

Students from UW-Madison are teaching computational thinking to next generation by leading after-school CaTaPuLTclubs for 4th and 5th graders. CaTaPuLT refers to Computational Thinking, Programming, Logic, and Technology. Our clubs focus on the creative aspects of computation; one of the empowering aspects of computation is that individuals are not limited to being passive users of technology and can create their own original games, stories, and interactive art. We use the Scratch programming environment for Programming and these creative aspects.

Our clubs are held weekly and work with the same group of kids each week. Each club is approximately one hour long and runs for 10-12 weeks. Three UW-Madison students co-lead each club; the UW students are enrolled in a service-learning course, CS 402, to obtain the skills to lead these clubs.

For more details, follow one of the links above!

Who are We?

Department of Computer Sciences

The CaTaPuLT clubs are hosted by students who are enrolled in a 2-credit service-learning course, CS 402 (Introducing CS to K-12 Students), which is offered each semester in the Department of Computer Sciences.

Morgridge Center

Thanks to the Morgridge Center for supporting service-learning courses at UW-Madison. CaTaPuLT is especially thankful to the Morgridge Center for providing transportation to sites that are further than 30 minutes from the UW Campus and the help of a Community-based Learning Fellow!

UW-Madison