Little Beaver - A New Bebras Contest Category for Children Aged 8-9

The teaching of Informatics in lower and upper secondary education has a long tradition in Slovakia. In 2009, a new subject, Elementary Informatics (“Informatická výchova“ in the Slovak language), was introduced into primary education. This paper describes its aims and relates how contests can be a form of learning and a way to test children’s knowledge. Secondary schools have the Bebras Contest, and in this article we present the process of transforming tasks from the international database of Bebras tasks so that they are appropriate for the national contest in Slovakia. Furthermore, in order to facilitate participation of primary school children in the contest, we prepared and tested tasks in a new contest category, Little Beaver. The paper presents criteria of an appropriate contest task for children who are between 8 and 9 years old. Several tasks, which were solved by them in the pilot year of the contest, are included.