The "Next Generation Science Standards" call for engaging students in practices that scientists and engineers use (NGSS Lead States 2013), but it's also important to explicitly teach thinking approaches that scientists and engineers use. One way to help children think and act like scientists and engineers is to engage them with computational thinking. Computational thinking (CT) is "a problem-solving methodology that can be automated and transferred and applied across subjects" (Barr and Stephenson 2011). This can involve breaking problems into smaller pieces, recognizing patterns, and making basic algorithms to solve problems. When students are taught how to engage with computational thinking, their capacity to abstract, represent information differently, and problem-solve often improves (Yadav et al. 2014). This article describes how teachers can use a 5E model (Engagement, Exploration, Explanation, Elaboration and Evaluation) to begin to teach students about light and then scaffold students to solve problems by communicating with light using CT.