Warm Up (15 min)

Vocabulary

This lesson has one new and important vocabulary word:

Event - Say it with me: E-vent

An event is an action that causes something to happen.

A Series of Events

• Prep your class to answer a question:
  • "I'm going to ask you a question. I want you to raise your hand if you want me to call on you for the answer."
  • Ask a simple question that most of your students should be able to answer, such as:
    • How many thumbs do I have?
    • What is bigger, a bird or a horse?
  • Call on a student who has their hand raised and let them give their answer.
  • Upon finishing that display, ask the class how you knew that the student wanted you to call on them.
    • Your class will likely mention the raising of the hand.
  • Explain to everyone that when students raise their hand, it is an "event" that causes you to know that they want to be called on.
• Ask the class if they can think of any other events that give signals.
  • You may need to remind them that you're not talking about an event like a birthday party or a field trip.
  • If they have trouble, you can remind them that an event is an action that causes something to happen.
    • What about an alarm clock going off? What does that make happen?
    • What about pressing "Start" on the microwave? What does that do?
    • What about pressing the power button on your tv remote?
• Today, we're going to practice changing programs by introducing events.

Main Activity (15 min)

The Big Event (Course C) - Event Controller

• Do you remember guiding Red from Angry Birds to the pig in the Maze puzzles?
  • In that exercise, you knew in advance exactly where you wanted Red to go, so you could make a program that took Red from start to finish without any interruptions.
  • In most real programs, we can't do that because we want to have options, depending on what the user needs.
    • Say that I only want my character to move when my finger is on the screen of my phone. I would need to program the character to only move when I put my finger on the screen of my phone.
    • Putting my finger on the screen would then become an "event" that tells my character to move.

In earlier lessons, we created algorithms that allowed us to control a friend or other character for several steps at a time. It was fun and useful, but what happens when you don’t know everything that you want your friend to do in advance? This is where events come in!

Directions:

• Project the Event Controller onto your classroom screen.

• Decide with your class what each button does. We suggest:
  • Pink Button -> Say “Wooooo!”
  • Teal Button -> “Yeah!”
  • Purple Dial -> “Boom!”
  • Green Button -> Clap
  • Orange Dial -> Stomp
• Practice tapping the buttons on the overhead and having your class react.
• Add some button sequences into the mix and have the students try to keep up with their sounds.
• Let your class know that every time you push a button, it is an “event” that lets them know what they are expected to do next.
• Get the class started on a planned task before interrupting them again with the buttons. We suggest:
  • Counting to 10
  • Singing “Old MacDonald”
• Once their plan is underway, interject button presses sporadically.
• Continue the blend until they understand the difference between actions that are guided by a plan and those that are event driven.

Wrap Up (10 min)

Flash Chat: What did we learn?

• Why do we need to be able to handle events in a program?
• What are some other kinds of events that you can think of?

Assessment (10 min)

The Big Event - Assessment

• Hand out the assessment worksheet and allow students to complete the activity independently after the instructions have been well explained.
• This should feel familiar, thanks to the previous activities.

Extended Learning

Use these activities to enhance student learning. They can be used as outside of class activities or other enrichment.

One Person's Event is Another One's Reaction

• Assign each student an event to watch out for, and an appropriate reaction to that event. Chain the actions so that each child's reaction becomes an event that triggers the reaction of another student. Keep assigning until everyone has something to do and everyone makes someone react.

Eventopalooza

• Break the class up into groups. Using the Events Controller, assign each group a different reaction to the same button. Do this for all three buttons, then watch the chaos!