Lesson 20: Mini-Project - Side Scroller

Review

Ask students to think of all of the things that they have learned how to do in the unit so far, and display their answers to the class. This is a good time to check in on any concepts that have been challenging for students.

Now that you've learned how to detect sprite interactions, you can start making some more interesting games. Today, we're going to look at how you can use what you've learned to make a side scroller game.

Question of the Day: How can the new types of sprite movement and collision detection be used to create a game?

Facilitating Mini-Projects: Mini-Projects act as checkpoints in the curricula and cover the subset of skills students have seen so far in the unit. They are designed for 1-2 days of implementation as a way to check-in with how well students understand the course content so far. You may decide to extend these projects as a way to support or challenge students, which could allow you to revisit difficult concepts or support students who may have missed lessons and are trying to catch up. However, we recommend deciding this ahead of time and being firm with students about how much time they have for each project - otherwise, it's easy for projects to drag-out to multiple days and for student's work to spiral beyond the scope of this project.

Distribute: (Optional) pass out copies of the activity guide. Students can use this sheet to plan out the Side Scroller they create at the end of this lesson, but the planning can also be completed on scratch paper.

Transition Send students to Code Studio.

Debugging Strategies: As students design and implement their own project ideas, they may find themselves with new bugs that they need to untangle and you may find yourself looking at completely unfamiliar code as students look for help troubleshooting their errors. To help smooth out the debugging experience, consider the following strategies:

• Review the Teacher Guide to Debugging for some common questions and strategies to help support students in debugging their code
• Have students follow the steps in the Student Guide to Debugging and use the Bug Report Quarter-Sheets as an initial step in the debugging process. This helps students prepare and communicate their issue before asking for help.
• If students haven't seen it yet, consider showing the Debugging Video to the class to reinforce debugging best practices.

Digging Deeper: Consider supplying students with an object to talk to as part of the debugging process. This is sometimes known as Rubber Duck Debugging - you can learn more on the website https://rubberduckdebugging.com/

Question of the Day: How can the new types of sprite movement and collision detection be used to create a game?

Prompt: What was one challenge in making this game? What is your advice for someone else who has the same challenge?