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Lesson 12: Events in Play Lab

Overview

In this online activity, students will have the opportunity to learn how to use events in Play Lab and to apply all of the coding skills they've learned to create an animated game. It's time to get creative and make a story in the Play Lab!

Purpose

Students will further develop their understanding of events using Play Lab today. Events are very common in most computer programs. In this activity, students will use events to make a character move around the screen, make noises, and change backgrounds based on user-initiated events.

Agenda

Warm Up (10 min)

Bridging Activity - Events (10 min)

Main Activity (30 min)

Wrap Up (5 - 10 min)

Extended Learning

View on Code Studio

Objectives

Students will be able to:

  • Identify actions that correlate to input events.
  • Create an animated, interactive story using sequence and event-handlers.
  • Share a creative artifact with other students.

Preparation

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.

Support

Report a Bug

Teaching Guide

Warm Up (10 min)

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 - Events (10 min)

This activity 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:

Lesson 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 The Big Event (Courses A, B) - Controller Image and Unplugged Blockly Blocks (Grades K-1) - 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.

Previewing Online Puzzles as a Class

Pull a puzzle from the corresponding puzzles online. We recommend puzzle 7. Call on different students to make a funny noise when you click on Jorge. Explain this is an event that they are reacting to and Jorge can be coded to make noise when you click on him.

Main Activity (30 min)

Course A Online Puzzles - Website

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 - 10 min)

Journaling

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.

Journal Prompts:

  • What was today’s lesson about?
  • Draw one of the Feeling Faces - Emotion Images 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.)

Standards Alignment

View full course alignment

CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards (2017)

AP - Algorithms & Programming
  • 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.

Cross-curricular Opportunities

This list represents opportunities in this lesson to support standards in other content areas.

Common Core English Language Arts Standards

L - Language
  • K.L.6 - Use words and phrases acquired through conversations, reading and being read to, and responding to texts.
SL - Speaking & Listening
  • K.SL.1 - Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about kindergarten topics and texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups.
  • K.SL.2 - Confirm understanding of a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other media by asking and answering questions about key details and requesting clarification if something is not understood.

Common Core Math Standards

CC - Counting And Cardinality
  • K.CC.4 - Understand the relationship between numbers and quantities; connect counting to cardinality.
G - Geometry
  • K.G.1 - Describe objects in the environment using names of shapes, and describe the relative positions of these objects using terms such as above, below, beside, in front of, behind, and next to.
MP - Math Practices
  • MP.1 - Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them
  • MP.2 - Reason abstractly and quantitatively
  • MP.5 - Use appropriate tools strategically
  • MP.6 - Attend to precision
  • MP.7 - Look for and make use of structure
  • MP.8 - Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning

Next Generation Science Standards

ETS - Engineering in the Sciences
ETS1 - Engineering Design
  • K-2-ETS1-1 - Ask questions, make observations, and gather information about a situation people want to change to define a simple problem that can be solved through the development of a new or improved object or tool.