Activation of cognitive activity of students when introducing the concept of "dictionary (associative array)"

The federal work program on informatics for the 11th grade at an advanced level indicates the need to study the "dictionary" data structure. When forming students' ideas about the new data structure, it is advisable to use teaching methods that stimulate students' cognitive activity. Such methods include creating a problematic situation and organizing a heuristic conversation to resolve it.To manage students' activities when creating and resolving a problem situation, it is convenient to use a sequence of interrelated tasks. To create a problematic situation when introducing the concept of "dictionary", you can use a task to build a frequency dictionary, and to analyze it, offer students tasks to identify characteristics in familiar data structures that do not allow them to use these structures.Tasks for forming an idea of the new data structure should include exercises on analyzing examples of using associative arrays to store various types of information, on mastering the concepts of "key" and "value", on mastering the syntax and semantics of accessing dictionary elements. Exercises for applying a new data structure to solve a problematic situation can include various types of tasks for organizing such types of symbolic activity as modeling, schematization and coding.