Practicing New Skills learned in Unit 5

In Unit 5 several of the new topics are introduced through debugging or modifying starter code (variables, if/else, while loops, strings). During the Create PT my students complained that they knew how to debug but didn’t know how to start from scratch. I looked back at the lessons that covered the topics students need to meet the logic and/or math requirements, and they usually have a lot of debugging/changing code that someone else has written.

How did you introduce those topics so students knew how to use them in a project they created themselves? Were there specific levels that were more helpful or did you create supplemental projects?

It may be too late for this year, but I’m making notes for what to do differently next year so my students can be more successful on the Create Task. Thanks!

Hey @lynn.garnaat!

I definitely ran into the same issue.

One possible way around the issue is for their Create PT, have them modify/improve an existing app - might explain why it’s not uncommon for students to do modified clicker games for their Create PT. :oP :o) This way, they’re not starting from scratch.

I think students face (at least) two challenges with starting from scratch:
deciding on an idea
and thinking of an algorithm for a new situation

Not many suggestions for the first issue, but a while ago I created some practice for students to try to write code from scratch… Here's a practice assignment for creating algorithms in App Lab

Would love to know what ideas other teachers have!

Frank

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