In Art, students create animations, interactive artwork, photograph filters, and other exciting, artistic projects.
Art is a complete theme designed to be completed over eight, 45-75 minute, sessions. For each Activity, students will watch a series of videos and create one coding project with opportunities to personalize their work using “Add-Ons”, which are mini-coding challenges that build on top of the core project.
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This is an unplugged activity in which pupils create simple models from modeling dough or draw quick sketches for a partner to guess what they are representing. In doing so they learn that they are ignoring unimportant details and only including that which is most important, and in so doing are abstracting. Pupils link this idea to what is and is not included in simple computer simulations and games.
PUPIL OBJECTIVES:I can say what is important and I must include.I can say what is unimportant and I can ignore.I can say how a computer program (for example, a computer simulation or game) includes what is important.
TEACHING ASSESSMENT OPPORTUNITIES:Informal teacher assessment of pupils during the main task and plenary. Focus on understanding of:
Thinking what is important to include.Thinking what can be ignored.Being aware that thinking about what is ignored or included in computer simulations and games is an important aspect of design.
By "programming" one another to draw pictures, students get an opportunity to experience some of the core concepts of programming in a fun and accessible way. The class will start by having students use symbols to instruct each other to color squares on graph paper in an effort to reproduce an existing picture. If there’s time, the lesson can conclude with images that the students create themselves.
The goal of this activity is to build critical-thinking skills and excitement for the course while introducing some of the fundamental programming concepts that will be used throughout the course. By introducing basic concepts like sequencing and algorithms to the class in an unplugged activity, students who are intimidated by computers can still build a foundation of understanding on these topics. In this lesson, students will learn how to develop an algorithm and encode it into a program.
Students will be able to:- reframe a sequence of steps as an encoded program.- explain the constraints of translating problems from human language to machine language.
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This lesson builds on the understanding of loops from previous lessons and gives students a chance to be truly creative. This activity doubles as a debugging exercise for extra problem-solving practice.
This series highlights the power of loops with an array of puzzles meant to get students thinking about why repeat loops are superior to longhand.
repeat
Students will be able to:- identify the benefits of using a loop structure instead of manual repetition.- differentiate between commands that need to be repeated in loops and commands that should be used on their own.
In this online activity, students will have the opportunity to push their understanding of loops to a whole new level. Playing with the Bee and Plants vs. Zombies, students will learn how to program a loop to be inside of another loop. They will also be encouraged to figure out how little changes in either loop will affect their program when they click Run.
Run
In this introduction to nested loops, students will go outside of their comfort zone to create more efficient solutions to puzzles. In earlier puzzles, loops pushed students to recognize repetition. Here, students will learn to recognize patterns within repeated patterns to develop these nested loops. This stage starts off by encouraging students to try to solve a puzzle where the code is irritating and complex to write out the long way. After a video introduces nested loops, students are shown an example and asked to predict what will happen when a loop is put inside of another loop. This progression leads to plenty of practice for students to solidify and build on their understanding of looping in programming.
Students will be able to:- break complex tasks into smaller repeatable sections.- recognize large repeated patterns as made from smaller repeated patterns.- identify the benefits of using a loop structure instead of manual repetition.
Students will create intricate designs using Artist in today's set of puzzles. By continuing to practice nested loops with new goals, students will see more uses of loops in general. This set of puzzles also offers a lot more potential for creativity with an opportunity for students to create their own design at the end of the stage.
In this online activity, students will create designs in Artist that they can proudly share with their loved ones. The purpose of this activity is to utilize nested loops as a way to inspire students with artistic minds to see coding as another creative outlet. This set of puzzles was built to develop critical thinking skills, an understanding of elementary geometry, and creativity -- all within the scope of nested loops!
Students will be able to:- combine simple shapes into complex designs with nested loops.- count the number of times an action should be repeated and represent it as a loop.- break complex tasks into smaller repeatable sections.
Now that students know how to layer their loops, they can create so many beautiful things. This lesson will take students through a series of exercises to help them create their own portfolio-ready images using Anna and Elsa's excellent ice-skating skills!
In this series, students will get practice nesting loops while creating images that they will be excited to share. Beginning with a handful of instructions, students will make their own decisions when it comes to creating designs for repetition. They will then spin those around a variety of ways to end up with a work of art that is truly unique.
Students will be able to:- break apart code into the largest repeatable sequences using both loops and nested loops.- recognize the difference between using a loop and a nested loop.- describe when a loop, nested loop, or no loop is needed.
By the time students reach this lesson, they should already have plenty of practice using repeat loops, so now it's time to mix things up.
While loops are loops that continue to repeat commands while a condition is met. While loops are used when the programmer doesn't know the exact number of times commands need to be repeated but does know what condition needs to be true in order for the loop to continue repeating. For example, students will be working to fill holes and dig dirt in Farmer. They will not know the size of the holes or the height of the mountains of dirt, but the students will know they need to keep filling the holes and digging the dirt as long as the ground is not flat.
While
As your students continue to deepen their knowledge of loops, they will come across problems where a command needs to be repeated, but it is unknown how many times it needs to be repeated. This is where while loops come in. In today's lesson, students will develop a beginner's understanding of condition-based loops and also expand their knowledge of loops in general.
while
Students will be able to:- distinguish between loops that repeat a fixed number of times and loops that repeat as long as a condition is true.- use a while loop to create programs that can solve problems with unknown values.
In this lesson, students will learn about until loops. Students will build programs that have the main character repeat actions until they reach their desired stopping point.
until
This set of puzzles will work to solidify and build on the knowledge of loops by adding the until conditional. By pairing these concepts together, students will be able to explore the potential for creating complex and innovative programs.
Students will be able to:- build programs with the understanding of multiple strategies to implement conditionals.- translate spoken language conditional statements and loops into a program.
This lesson demonstrates how conditionals can be used to tailor a program to specific information. We don’t always have all of the information we need when writing a program. Sometimes you will want to do something different in one situation than in another, even if you don't know what situation will be true when your code runs. That is where conditionals come in. Conditionals allow a computer to make a decision, based on the information that is true any time your code is run.
One of the best parts of teaching conditionals is that students already understand the concept from their everyday lives.
This lesson merges computer science into the real world by building off of students ability to tell if a condition is true or false. Students will learn to use if statements to declare when a certain command should be run, as well as if/else statements to declare when a command should be run and what do run otherwise. Students may not recognize the word conditionals, but most students will understand the idea of using "if" to make sure that some action only occurs when it is supposed to.
if
if/else
Students will be able to:- define circumstances when certain parts of a program should run and when they shouldn't.- determine whether a conditional is met based on criteria.- traverse a program and predict the outcome, given a set of input.
Students will practice while loops, until loops, and if / else statements. All of these blocks use conditionals. By practicing all three, students will learn to write complex and flexible code.
if / else
Practicing the use of conditionals in different scenarios helps to develop a student's understanding of what conditionals can do. In the previous lesson, students only used conditionals to move around a maze. In this lesson, students will use conditionals to help the farmer know when to harvest crops. New patterns will emerge and students will use creativity and logical thinking to determine the conditions where code should be run and repeated.
Students will be able to:- nest conditionals to analyze multiple value conditions using if, else if, else logic.- pair a loop and conditional statement together.
In this online activity, students will have the opportunity to learn how to use events in Play Lab and to apply all of the coding skills they've learned to create an animated game. It's time to get creative and make a game in Play Lab!
Students will use events to make characters move around the screen, make noises, and change backgrounds based on user input. This lesson offers a great introduction to events in programming and even gives a chance to show creativity! At the end of the puzzle sequence, students will be presented with the opportunity to share their projects.
Students will be able to:- create an animated, interactive game using sequence and events.- identify actions that correlate to input events.
This series of online lessons will have students learning to make images using on and off. This will help reinforce the fact that computers can do a multitude of things with 0s and 1s.
Students will be able to:- create pictures using unique combinations of on and off.- identify repeated sequences and break long codes up into smaller chunks that can be looped.- utilize loops and binary code to recreate provided images.
In this activity students work in small groups to write the steps to an everyday task or the steps in a "how to" scenario. The steps the groups write serve as an algorithm. The groups will then swap their writing for the teams to now "debug" each other's work to make the steps more precise.
This activity was demonstrated during the Exploring Today's Classroom (ETC) Summit.
