A Playful Approach to Formal Models A field report on teaching modeling fundamentals at middle school

Formal methods – besides supplying a set of generally mathematics-oriented formalisms – provide a collection of elementary concepts capturing the essential aspects of (software) systems independent of the chosen formalism. Getting a good intuition of these elementary concepts (e.g., variable, value, state, event) is a prime requisite to education in formal methods. The introduction of Informatics in German middle schools offers an opportunity to introduce these modeling concepts in a non-mathematical fashion to foster their early and intuitive understanding as a basis for further education.