Design and Exploratory Evaluation of Unplugged Activities Based on Theater and Dance in Introductory Computer Science Education

Unplugged activities can broaden access to introductory computing in schools with limited technological infrastructure, but their representational design varies considerably. This paper examines how unplugged activities can be reworked with embodied elements such as theater, narration, and choreographed movement to support short-term understanding of introductory computing concepts among secondary-school students aged 13–17 in Brazilian public schools. We report six embodied adaptations addressing error detection, cryptography, binary numbers, image representation, finite automata, and sorting. Our contributions are: (1) a design rationale grounded in unplugged pedagogy and embodied learning; (2) a documented set of embodied adaptations, including notes on their origins and representational mapping; and (3) an exploratory evaluation based on two focal school implementations, with a pre-/post-test (52 students) in one school and an exit questionnaire (40 students) in another. Descriptive results show consistent immediate gains across all six concepts, with larger gains for image representation, cryptography, and binary numbers. Qualitative responses suggest high engagement and perceived accessibility, while also indicating uneven depth across concepts. We interpret these findings as context-bound evidence of feasibility and short-term promise, not as proof of causal superiority, and we discuss implications for representational design, observer versus performer embodiment, and future comparative research.