< Course D (2021)

Lesson 17: End of Course Project

45 minutes

Overview

This project lesson takes students through the process of designing, developing, and showcasing new projects!

Purpose

This lesson provides students with space to create a project of their own design, using a step-by-step process that requires planning but also allows for broad creativity.

CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards (2017)
    • 1B-AP-10 - Create programs that include sequences, events, loops, and conditionals.
    • 1B-AP-12 - Modify, remix or incorporate portions of an existing program into one's own work, to develop something new or add more advanced features.
    • 1B-AP-14 - Observe intellectual property rights and give appropriate attribution when creating or remixing programs.
    • 1B-AP-17 - Describe choices made during program development using code comments, presentations, and demonstrations.
    • 1B-IC-21 - Use public domain or creative commons media and refrain from copying or using material created by others without permission.

Agenda

Objectives

Students will be able to:
  • Overcome obstacles such as time constraints or bugs.

Preparation

  • Play through the puzzles to find any potential problem areas for your class.
  • Print out one *Project Planning Guide for each student (or pair).
  • (Optional) Complete your own planning guide and code your own project to show to students!

Links

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

For the students

Teaching Guide

Warm Up (10 minutes)

Planning

Get students excited and ready for today's activity!

Remarks

We have already had a chance to build a variety of projects. Today, this experience will be much more open-ended, so it will require planning beforehand! Planning is a very important part of coding a game or any other kind of software. So, before we jump onto computers, we will spend some time planning the projects we want to build.

Distribute: Distribute one *Project Planning Guide to each student or pair. With students, go over the steps listed on the guide, then allow them to complete it. Refer to the included exemplar if needed.

Teaching Tip

If students are pair programming for this assignment, this warm up is a great opportunity for them to practice sharing and respecting others' ideas. Ensure students are following group work norms you already have in place in your classroom. Otherwise, spend a brief moment going over your expectations.

Main Activity (25 minutes)

End of Course Project

Equipped with their completed planning guides, students are now ready to bring their projects to life. These levels correspond to the structure of the planning guide, and help navigate students through the process of transforming their ideas into code.

Teaching Tip

Students will experience plenty of trial and error while coding. Their projects are likely to become truncated versions of their original scope. Remind students that this kind of compromise is common in software design. It's okay if they don't get to build in every feature they planned!

Wrap Up (10 minutes)

Showcase

To celebrate students' work, spend the last 10 minutes or so allowing them to showcase their projects. This can be done in many ways, but here are a few:

  • Public Demo: Select a few exemplary volunteers to briefly demo their projects in front of the class. As they do so, have them touch on what the planning-to-coding experience was like for them, including ideas they'd still like to implement.
  • Pair Playtesting: Have students or groups pair up and playtest each other's projects. As they do, ask them to provide positive and constructive feedback to each other. The benefit here is that students will have the opportunity to provide and respond to feedback in a smaller setting.
  • Gallery Walk: Ensure all students have their projects ready for testing. Have students move "musical chairs"-style to another computer and play/test the project there for a few minutes, until they receive a signal from you to move to another computer. Repeat this every few minutes. While there is less opportunity for structured communication here, this ensures students get to demo as many of their peers' projects as possible.
Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

This work is available under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

If you are interested in licensing Code.org materials for commercial purposes contact us.