CourseE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28

Lesson 7: Drawing Shapes with Loops

Overview

Watch student faces light up as they make their own gorgeous designs using a small number of blocks and digital stickers! This lesson builds on the understanding of loops from previous lessons and gives students a chance to be truly creative. This activity is fantastic for producing artifacts for portfolios or parent/teacher conferences.

Purpose

This series highlights the power of loops with creative and personal designs.

Offered as a project-backed sequence, this progression will allow students to build on top of their own work and create amazing artifacts.

Agenda

Warm Up (15 min)

Main Activity (30 min)

Wrap Up (15 min)

View on Code Studio

Objectives

Students will be able to:

  • Identify the benefits of using a loop structure instead of manual repetition.
  • Differentiate between commands that need to be repeated in loops and commands that should be used on their own.

Preparation

Links

Heads Up! Please make a copy of any documents you plan to share with students.

For the Teachers

For the Students

Vocabulary

  • Loop - The action of doing something over and over again.
  • Repeat - To do something again.

Support

Report a Bug

Teaching Guide

Warm Up (15 min)

Introduction

Students should have had plenty of introduction to loops at this point. Based on what you think your class could benefit from, we recommend:

  • Creating a new stack design with loops just like in "My Loopy Robotic Friends"
  • Previewing a puzzle from this lesson

All of these options will either review loops or the artist, which will help prepare your class for fun with the online puzzles!

Main Activity (30 min)

Course E Online Puzzles 2018 - Website

Some students may discover where to add repeat loops by writing out the program without loops then circling sections of repetitions. If the students in your class seem like they could benefit from this, have them keep paper and pencils beside them at their machines. Students might also enjoy drawing some of the shapes and figures on paper before they program it online. (When drawing stamps, it can be easier to symbolize those with simple shapes like circles and squares.)

Wrap Up (15 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?
  • How did you feel during today’s lesson?
  • What was the coolest shape or figure you programmed today? Draw it out!
  • What is another shape or figure you would like to program? Can you come up with the code to create it?

Standards Alignment

View full course alignment

CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards (2017)

AP - Algorithms & Programming
  • 1B-AP-11 - Decompose (break down) problems into smaller, manageable subproblems to facilitate the program development process.

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
  • 4.L.6 - Acquire and use accurately grade-appropriate general academic and domain-specific words and phrases, including those that signal precise actions, emotions, or states of being (e.g., quizzed, whined, stammered) and that are basic to a particular topic (e.g
SL - Speaking & Listening
  • 4.SL.1 - Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 4 topics and texts, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.
  • 4.SL.1.a - Come to discussions prepared, having read or studied required material; explicitly draw on that preparation and other information known about the topic to explore ideas under discussion.
  • 4.SL.1.b - Follow agreed-upon rules for discussions and carry out assigned roles.
  • 4.SL.4 - Report on a topic or text, tell a story, or recount an experience in an organized manner, using appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details to support main ideas or themes; speak clearly at an understandable pace.
  • 4.SL.6 - Differentiate between contexts that call for formal English (e.g., presenting ideas) and situations where informal discourse is appropriate (e.g., small-group discussion); use formal English when appropriate to task and situation.

Common Core Math Standards

MD - Measurement And Data
  • 4.MD.5 - Recognize angles as geometric shapes that are formed wherever two rays share a common endpoint, and understand concepts of angle measurement:
  • 4.MD.5.a - An angle is measured with reference to a circle with its center at the common endpoint of the rays, by considering the fraction of the circular arc between the points where the two rays intersect the circle. An angle that turns through 1/360 of a circle i
MP - Math Practices
  • MP.1 - Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them
  • MP.2 - Reason abstractly and quantitatively
  • MP.3 - Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others
  • 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
OA - Operations And Algebraic Thinking
  • 4.OA.1 - Interpret a multiplication equation as a comparison, e.g., interpret 35 = 5 × 7 as a statement that 35 is 5 times as many as 7 and 7 times as many as 5. Represent verbal statements of multiplicative comparisons as multiplication equations.
  • 4.OA.5 - Generate a number or shape pattern that follows a given rule. Identify apparent features of the pattern that were not explicit in the rule itself. For example, given the rule “Add 3” and the starting number 1, generate terms in the resulting sequence and

Next Generation Science Standards

ETS - Engineering in the Sciences
ETS1 - Engineering Design
  • 3-5-ETS1-1 - Define a simple design problem reflecting a need or a want that includes specified criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost.