I'm building a K-12 comp sci curriculum for a network of schools and we're pulling a LOT from this. Why? I previously taught an intro CS course to 8th graders with the "jump straight to the code" method, and found that many, if not most students struggled with conceptualizing and articulating algorithms, even in Scratch which is very visual.

Moving forward, our curriculum is going to build those skills up front and off-screen, then move to code. How we build those is a continuing work in progress, but CS Unplugged is a big part of that.