In Interactive Animations & Games Unit, I see a huge increase in engagement when we get to Lesson 8 - Sprites. I was wondering why doesn’t this happen earlier in the course. To be honest, my students aren’t necessarily jazzed about drawing simple shapes on the screen. Has anyone taken the approach of Sprites First (almost how we do the object first approach in CSA)?
This approach front loads the unit to make big momentum right off the bat. Create fun scenes quickly and then introduce adding shapes and text. Randomness can be incorporated with sprite location and other properties. Imagine having conversations about a character appearing randomly around the screen, instead of a simple ellipse. I also think this provides a better introduction to variables; because we have seen a var block from day one, but now it makes sense why we needed a tool to store and remember stuff, like our sprites.
Has anyone experimented with prioritizing sprites earlier in this unit? I’d love to hear thoughts on this.
