Lesson 4: Lists Make

Discuss: Imagine you want to build an app for reminders. What information do you think would be stored in a list?

Discussion Goal: Students may struggle with this question. It's ok if they don't get it right away. The goal is to prime their thinking before they look at the sample app.

Sample Answer: The reminders could be stored in a list.

For the past few days, we've learned a lot about using lists to help apps keep track of information. In today's Make Project you'll be practicing using lists and programming patterns with lists to create a functioning Reminders app.

Supporting Students: While students are working on their apps, circulate the room and check in with students who need a little help. Encourage students to collaborate and discuss bugs with each other.

Debugging: Review with students steps they can use to debug if they get stuck:

• Run the code on turtle mode
• Add the variables to the watcher
• Explain the code to a friend

Group: Make a determination as to whether this project will be completed in pairs or individually. You may even choose to let students decide.

Do This: Have students explore the working Reminder App in Level 1.

If students are not working in pairs they should still discuss the discuss with a neighbor.

Discuss:

• How many lists do you think are needed to make this app work?

  • Only one list is needed. It stores all of the reminders.

• What programming patterns with lists do you think you'll need to use?

  • This app uses the List Scrolling pattern.

Now let's build the this app. The screen has been set up for you - it's your job to add the code!

Do This: Direct students to level three where they complete the Reminder App. An optional Activity Guide is provided if students would like guidance in creating the app. The most relevant programming pattern is displayed on a slide. Review this pattern quickly with students, if needed.

Submit: Encourage students to check the rubric on the last page of the Activity Guide before submitting.

Adapting Make Lessons - You may decide that you'd like to have your students write the code for a modified or entirely different app using the same skills. This might help you differentiate your instruction or provide you with a way to reassess students. Check out the Customize Make Lessons: How-To-Guide for guidance on how to get started with this.

Great work on your Reminder app today. Before wrapping up, we will practice writing for the style of questions that are asked as part of the Create performance task on the AP exam. Respond to the question in Step 5 in your activity guide, and submit it along with your project.

Do This: Complete the written response in Step 5 of the Activity Guide.

Each student, in every classroom, will come to the written response with a different level of comfort, ability, and familiarity with writing for these style of questions. As such, consider offering one or more of the following supports:

Writing Support: Provide students with these sentence starters for guiding their response.

App Interface Support: For students who did not fully complete their app, provide them with this snippet from the exemplar code.

Use the rubric provided with the project to assess student projects.

Student responses can be used as a formative assessment to evaluate their understanding of connections between user interface features and functionality. Review their explanations for clarity, accuracy, and alignment with the AP exam’s expectations. The provided rubric can be used to guide this review, and to help provide students with feedback to guide their learning and improvement.