< Course B (2021)

Lesson 12: Mini-Project: A Royal Battle with Events

55 minutes

Overview

In this mini-project, students will have the opportunity to learn how to use events in Play Lab and apply all of the coding skills that they've learned to create an animated game.

Purpose

In this online activity, students will learn how to use events in Play Lab. They will start by training the knight to move when an arrow key is pressed, then end with the opportunity to showcase the rest of the skills that they learned throughout this course, including sequence and looping, as part of the final freeplay puzzle.

CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards (2017)
    • 1A-AP-09 - Model the way programs store and manipulate data by using numbers or other symbols to represent information.
    • 1A-AP-11 - Decompose (break down) the steps needed to solve a problem into a precise sequence of instructions.

Agenda

Objectives

Students will be able to:
  • Create an animated, interactive story using sequences and event-handlers.
  • Identify actions that correlate to input events.
  • Share a creative artifact with other students.

Preparation

  • Play through the puzzles to find any potential problem areas for your class.
  • (Optional) Pick a couple of puzzles to do as a group with your class.
  • Review *CS Fundamentals Main Activity Tips - Lesson Recommendations.
  • Make sure every student has a reflection journal.

Links

Heads Up! Please make a copy of any documents you plan to share with students.

For the teachers
For the students

Vocabulary

  • Event - An action that causes something to happen.

Teaching Guide

Warm Up (10 minutes)

Introduction

Review "The Big Event" activity with students:

  • What did we "program" the button events to do?

Now we're going to add events to our code. Specifically, we're going to have an event for when two characters touch each other.

  • When have you seen two characters touch each other as an event in games?

Bridging Activity - Choose One (10 minutes)

These activities will help bring the unplugged concepts from "The Big Event" into the online world that the students are moving into. Choose one of the following to do with your class:

Teaching Tip

Students will have the opportunity to share their final product with a link. This is a great opportunity to show your school community the great things your students are doing. Collect all of the links and keep them on your class website for all to see!

Remind the students to only share their work with their close friends or family. For more information watch or show the class *Pause and Think Online - Video.

Unplugged Activity Using Paper Blocks

Using the remote from the *Worksheet and *manipulatives, gather your class to reprise the activity from the previous lesson. Ask the class "when the teal button is pushed, what do we do?" then fill in one of the when event blocks and one of the blue action blocks accordingly. Make sure that the students understand that the when blocks need to be on top of the blue block and they need to touch in order for the program to run.

-Or-

Previewing Online Puzzles as a Class

Pull a puzzle from the corresponding online puzzles. We recommend puzzle 4 of this stage. Call on different students to make a funny face representing a mood when you click on Daisy. Explain this is an event that they are reacting to and Daisy can be coded to change moods when you click on her.

Main Activity (30 minutes)

A Royal Battle with Events

This is the most free-form plugged activity of the course. At the final stage students have the freedom to create a story of their own. You may want to provide structured guidelines around what kind of story to write, particularly for students who are overwhelmed by too many options.

Wrap Up (5 minutes)

Reflection

Having students write about what they learned, why it’s useful, and how they feel about it can help solidify any knowledge they obtained today and build a review sheet for them to look to in the future.

Prompts:

  • What was today’s lesson about?
  • Draw one of the *Feeling Faces that shows how you felt about today's lesson in the corner of your journal page.
  • Draw an event you used in your program today.
  • Imagine that you have a remote controlled robot. What would the remote look like? Draw a picture of what you think you could make the robot do.

Extended Learning

Use these activities to enhance student learning. They can be used as outside of class activities or other enrichment.

Look Under the Hood

When you share a link to your story, you also share all of the code that goes behind it. This is a great way for students to learn from each other.

  • Post links to completed stories online
    • Make a story of your own to share as well!
  • When students load up a link, have them click the "How it Works" button to see the code behind the story.
  • Discuss as a group the different ways your classmates coded their stories.
    • What surprised you?
    • What would you like to try?
  • Choose someone else's story and click Remix to build on it. (Don't worry, the original story will be safe.)
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