Notes:
11 students, 9-12th Grades with little experience in CS.
U3L05 - Variables
Similar experience to Lesson 4, but students had a more grounded understanding in why variables are helpful. The video and map are great in this lesson and helpful to start with. Puzzles 6 & 7 seemed difficult for some students, but also had students by passing the instructions at the top, which I referred them back to.
The Debug: Naming Variables Puzzle 9 was tough for almost everyone because they hadn’t seen the var __= __; block as text before and the first thing 8 out of 11 students did was delete the space between the var and the second word. Next time I’ll be sure to press students to check back and forth with block and text in these earlier levels (which my HS class should be doing anyway).
It seems that any level with an image, the students think they have to make the image and ignore the text (Puzzle 10) - if the goal image was at the bottom we might have a better success rate of students doing the work to understand the process.
I liked the journal entry at the end to connect to Unit 1 again and have them see that Unit 1 - Problem Solving is foundational.
Hey @bradleywellsashley - Interesting feedback on the level that forces them into text. Definitely noted that as something we might want to take a look at.
What were students struggling with on puzzles 6 and 7?
Mostly the “drawSprites” block which I see as a common mistake. I stressed the two processes: setting up your Sprite and THEN calling it to the canvas/screen. In Lesson 7 same thing with the Draw loop. Just need to break down those steps more clearly.