Notes:
11 students, 9-12th Grades with little experience in CS.
U2L03 - Plotting Shapes
The plotting shapes activity was really successful as students in my class, as I’ve mentioned before, are very competitive. I had two students come up to the board and project the image for classmates to describe. We went around the room and all said something - without anyone mentioning any sort of grid or size unit which, for a HS class of 9-12, I found surprising.
After that students worked in partners (one with me because of our 11 students) and I had covered both images on the print out with post its so they had no clue. By the end of the activity everyone saw how helpful the grid was to plot, but some students still struggled to use the “x” and “y” verbiage. And very few, again I was surprised, mentioned the large black dot as the origin point of the shape - which is a great tool and hopefully it’ll click later. They enjoyed the hands on activity and created some interesting pictures.
Note: I had students draw everything and didn’t want to take my, or class time, to cut out the supplied shapes - plus I was pushing it asking for a couple color pages in the first place!
Hey @bradleywellsashley - Thanks for sharing. Do you still feel like they got the same goals with just drawing the shapes? Definitely interested to hear if students pick up the x and y terms with a couple more lessons.
I think they did, the only thing I was watching for was the black dot to show where the origin was and they didn’t pick up on that at all. The later lessons are going smoothly with the x and y, just the mind flip for y to increase moving down the page. In a call GT had mentioned a possible “grid” to turn on which is helpful as I use that with Scratch in my ES lessons.