Artificial intelligence course has been required to take for compulsory education students in China. However, not all teachers and schools are fully prepared and ready. This is partially because of the lack of adequate teaching and learning resources, which requires a major expenditure of time and effort for schools and teachers to design and develop. To meet the challenge of lacking appropriate resources in teaching and learning AI from grade 1 to grade 9, we developed AI knowledge structure and instructional resources based on Chinese national curriculum for information science and technology. Our comprehensive AI syllabus contains 90 core concepts, 63 learning indicators, and 27 teaching and learning resources, which have been implemented. The resources have been taken as model courses in teacher training programs and an exemplary course has been implemented in primary schools that verified the effectiveness of our resources.

In response to the trend that artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming the main driver for social and economic development, enhancing the readiness of learners in AI is significant and important. The state council and the ministry of education of China put AI education for K-12 schools on a high priority in order to foster local AI talents and reduce educational disparities. However, the AI knowledge and technical skills are still limited for not only students but also the school teachers. Furthermore, many local schools in China, especially in the rural areas, are lack of the necessary software and hardware for teaching AI. Hence, we designed and implemented a structured series of AI courses, built on an online block-based visual programming platform. The AI courses are free and easily accessible for all. We have conducted the experimental classes in a local school and collected the results. The results show that the learners in general gained significant learning progress on AI knowledge comprehension, aroused strong interests in AI, and increased the degree of satisfaction towards the course. Especially, our practices significantly increased computational thinking of the students who were initially staying at a lower level.