I am teaching this lesson to a group of 7th and 8th graders in a computer science elective class. We are in the card development stage of this lessons (bubbles 3-7). The exemplar and discussion questions associated with it were very helpful in getting students to consider the logical parts that made up the whole card (or program). Looking at the code after we discussed how someone might program the functionality was helpful in addressing the fact that there are many different ways to code a solution to a given problem. It was also important for students to then see the program and how the code was written.
Students had difficulty understanding how to complete the activity sheet and didn’t want to take the time to complete it. However, it was VERY useful to have the students complete the activity sheet before getting their computers for this work session. I made students show me their work and explain how their card would work before allowing them to retrieve their computers and get started programming.
I did notice several typos in the activity sheet (attached):
Lesson number at the top of the page is wrong
duplicate “to” in first line of instructions.
No ending punctuation in first sentence.
“This” should be “The” in the instructions for Designing your background.
The instructions in the “Rubric” section needs to be completed.
The graph needs to be places in the Design Your Background section.
I just introduced the project today and well received by my students. The open ended project allowed for some really good brainstorming.
The warm up activity went really well and I liked having the exemplar to show them before they started. . We watched the card work a few times and then they wrote in their notebooks about the questions prompts. then we did small group discussion, and concluded with whole group.
The students liked the planning guide as a first step and I agree with Matt’s comments above that it is a necessary tool for them to use. My students who are more confident are able to fill the guide out with ease. My struggling students expressed some resistance with completing the whole guide because they were unsure of what they wanted to do and felt they could do just as good of a job without completing it.
I had 8 students who asked for another sheet of paper because they messed up and
I think next time I will use separate page with two 20x20 boxes to draw on. Maybe move the two bottom boxes and reference chart to the back of the page.
Question: I had two students ask if the Add Frame option could be added in the animation screen for the sprites they are making. They have been working ahead in stage 18 and the option is available to use there. If it is not suppose to be an option at the stage I can have those students work in the full version of code studio.
Since adding multiple frames is taught in Chapter 2 (after Lesson 10) I believe it is intentionally left out here so as not to add confusion for students. It sounds like having them work in full Game Lab is a good solution.
One tweak I have for the rubric:
Either as part of the first criterion (background) or as a separate one, add:
“Text is included to give your user directions on how to operate your card”
Quick question. Is there a way for students to bring sprites to the front? I’m thinking like z-index, but I dont’ know if there is a function for that right now.
The easiest way to deal with this is to draw the sprites in the order you want them to be in. However sometimes you want that to change during the program. The command to deal with that is sprite.depth(). For all the sprites you need to get in order. Check out this simple example for starters https://studio.code.org/projects/gamelab/FmDbZm6FvyFwdl_4bliDjA.
Notes:
11 students, 9-12th Grades with little experience in CS.
U3L14 - Interactive Card Project
This was a good chance for students to self evaluate where they were. I agree with previous statements about the planning guide and next time I’ll have it as an assignment (I generally have the students use the sheet as a guide for their own benefit, but this one seemed needed).
The buy in is the most difficult part for this lesson (and anything that students are able to creatively create as a final project).
These projects are difficult because it’s like grading a piece of artwork, it might not be very good but met the “requirements” and the student tried.
Similar experience to earlier where students that understood everything had great cards and were way ahead and students that were struggling were falling behind and those cards “just met requirements”.
With all that said, it was still a good point to stop, breathe and take inventory.