Can you program a paper robot?

Give a tiny instruction

An algorithm is a sequence of instructions. Ask one person to be a paper robot and another to write steps for moving a pencil across a grid. A direction like “go over there” may sound clear until someone has to follow it exactly.

Start with small commands: move one square, turn right, and stop. Compare the path you imagined with the line your partner drew.

Notice the repeat

If a set of steps happens again and again, you have found a loop. Four repeats of “move one square, turn right” can trace a square. Change the number of steps and predict the new shape before drawing it.

When the result looks different from the plan, inspect one instruction at a time. Finding and fixing that mismatch is debugging.

Explain the change

Ask what the robot did, what the programmer expected, and which single edit made the result clearer. The goal is not to write perfect instructions first; it is to make an idea testable and improve it.