Lesson 4: Share Your Book Cover

Display: Show “Share Your Book Cover” slide

Display: Follow the directions on the slide:

1. At the top of your app, click the “Share” Button.
2. Click the “Copy Link to Project” button.
3. Open a new tab and paste your link there.

Do This: Have students open up their project in a new tab on their computer. Ensure all students have their projects ready for testing before moving on.

Display: Show “Gallery Walk” slide

Say: Now it is time to show off our hard work! As you look at your classmates’ book covers, think about the sprites and dialogue they used. Did any of your classmates choose the same book that you did? How did their choices compare to yours?

Leave a note for each of your classmates using one of the sentence starters on the slide:

• I liked your decision to ____!
• I liked that your code included ____.
• I want to read the book you chose because ____.

Do This: Hand out a stack of post it notes to each student. 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. As students go around the room, they should be writing a note for each classmate whose project they test out.

There is an optional Sticky Notes Handout with sentence stems that you can print out and cut into slips for students to use during the Gallery Walk. This way students do not have to spend time writing out the sentence stems each time, and can devote more of their energy on experiencing the different projects.

Display: Show “Discuss” slide

Discuss:

1. What sprites and dialogue did you see in your classmates’ book covers?
2. What is being portrayed in this scene?
3. How were their choices similar to yours? How were they different?
4. Would you want to read the book based on its cover?

Do This: Have students return to their seats for a discussion. In pairs or as a class, ask students to share a note that they left for one of their classmates.

Discussion Goal: The goal is for students to understand how their book covers are similar to or different from their classmates’ book covers. They should also notice how different choices of sprites and dialogue made them feel about wanting to read the book.

Display: Show “Final Thoughts” slide

Reflect: You've probably heard the saying "don't judge a book by its cover". Think about the book covers that you and your classmates coded.

Do you agree with the saying? Why or why not?

Do This: Have students discuss the reflection question in small groups, then bring the class together for a larger class discussion.

Discussion Goal: Students should recognize that a book cover can convey some, but not all, information about a book. Also, the same book cover can be designed differently by different people. The book covers that students coded might be more helpful than a regular book cover in helping someone choose what book to read because they feature sprites and dialogue.

This module is a great introduction to computer science through the lens of ELA. Here are a few options to continue learning more about the concepts introduced in this module. We recommend pursuing these extensions after completing Lesson 4 in this module.

Computer Science:

• Events in Bounce: Students will continue applying their understanding of events by making a sports-based game. They learn to make their paddle move according to arrow keys, and make noises when objects collide. At the very end, they will customize their game to make it more unique!
• Poem Art: Add art and animation to a classic poem in this Hour of Code activity!

English Language Arts:

• Compare and contrast the experience of reading a story to listening to or viewing a video version of the text, including contrasting what they "see" and "hear" when reading the text to what they perceive when they listen or watch.
• Compare books with their movie adaptations. Have students extend the idea of a book cover to other subject areas: create a book cover that encapsulates their math textbook, science textbook, history textbook, etc.