Lesson 18: End of Course Project
Overview
This capstone lesson takes students through the process of designing, developing, and showcasing their own Play Lab projects! To ensure this process goes smoothly, we have provided a step-by-step structure for students to follow, from planning on paper to coding on our website. In addition, we offer ideas to help teachers facilitate a showcase finale!
Purpose
This lesson provides students with space to create a project of their own design, using a step-by-step process that requires planning but also allows for broad creativity.
Agenda
Warm Up (10 min)
Main Activity (25 min)
Wrap Up (10 min)
View on Code Studio
Objectives
Students will be able to:
- Use a planned design as a blueprint for creation.
- Overcome obstacles such as time constraints or bugs.
Preparation
- Play through the puzzles to find any potential problem areas for your class.
- Print out one Play Lab Project Planning Guide for each student (or pair).
- Review the Play Lab Project Planning Guide (Exemplar) document.
- (Optional) Complete your own planning guide and code your own project to show to students!
Links
Heads Up! Please make a copy of any documents you plan to share with students.
For the Teachers
- Play Lab Project Planning Guide (Exemplar) - Lesson Resource
For the Students
- Play Lab Project Planning Guide - Worksheet
Support
Report a Bug
Teaching Guide
Warm Up (10 min)
Planning
Get students excited and ready for today's activity!
Remarks
We have already had a chance to build a project in Play Lab. Today, this experience will be much more open-ended, so it will require planning beforehand! Planning is a very important part of coding a game or any other kind of software. So, before we jump onto computers, we will spend some time planning the projects we want to build.
Teaching Tip
If students are pair programming for this assignment, this warm up is a great opportunity for them to practice sharing and respecting others' ideas. Ensure students are following group work norms you already have in place in your classroom. Otherwise, spend a brief moment going over your expectations.
Distribute: Distribute one Play Lab Project Planning Guide to each student or pair. With students, go over the steps listed on the guide, then allow them to complete it. Refer to the included exemplar if needed.
Main Activity (25 min)
Coding
Teaching Tip
Students will experience plenty of trial and error while coding. Their projects are likely to become truncated versions of their original scope. Remind students that this kind of compromise is common in software design. It's okay if they don't get to build in every feature they planned!
Equipped with their completed planning guides, students are now ready to bring their projects to life. These levels correspond to the structure of the planning guide, and help navigate students through the process of transforming their ideas into code.
Wrap Up (10 min)
Showcase
To celebrate students' work, spend the last 10 minutes or so allowing them to showcase their projects. This can be done in many ways, but here are a few:
- Public Demo: Select a few exemplary volunteers to briefly demo their projects in front of the class. As they do so, have them touch on what the planning-to-coding experience was like for them, including ideas they'd still like to implement.
- Pair Playtesting: Have students or groups pair up and playtest each other's projects. As they do, ask them to provide positive and constructive feedback to each other. The benefit here is that students will have the opportunity to provide and respond to feedback in a smaller setting.
- Gallery Walk: Ensure all students have their projects ready for testing. Have students move "musical chairs"-style to another computer and playtest the project there for a few minutes, until they receive a signal from you to move to another computer. Repeat this every few minutes. While there is less opportunity for structured communication here, this ensures students get to demo as many of their peers' projects as possible.
Student Instructions
The Design Process
Student Instructions
It is amazing how much you have learned! Let's make a game step by step.
Using new blocks in your toolbox, choose a new background, then pick an actor to be in your game.
Student Instructions
Use blocks like events and actions to make your player move when you press the arrow keys.
Get the player to the targets to complete this puzzle.
Student Instructions
Let's add some more characters to your game!
Use the set actor block to add more characters then move to the goal to complete this puzzle.
Student Instructions
Multiple characters and getting the actors moving is a great start to a game, but we need to do more to make this feel like a real game. Let's add a score!
Use event blocks like the when actor touches to change the score or win the game. Score 5 points or win the game to complete this puzzle.
Student Instructions
Great job! You have all the basic components of a working game. Now spend some time making sure the game works the way you want. When you are done, click "Finish"!
Student Instructions
You've finished! Now you can play your game or share it with your friends and classmates!
Standards Alignment
View full course alignment
CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards (2017)
AP - Algorithms & Programming
- 1A-AP-10 - Develop programs with sequences and simple loops, to express ideas or address a problem.
- 1A-AP-12 - Develop plans that describe a program's sequence of events, goals, and expected outcomes.
- 1A-AP-13 - Give attribution when using the ideas and creations of others while developing programs.
- 1A-AP-15 - Using correct terminology, describe steps taken and choices made during the iterative process of program development.
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.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.
W - Writing
- 4.W.6 - With some guidance and support from adults, use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing as well as to interact and collaborate with others; demonstrate sufficient command of keyboarding skills to type a minimum of one page in a
Common Core Math Standards
MP - Math Practices
- MP.1 - Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them
- MP.2 - Reason abstractly and quantitatively
- MP.4 - Model with mathematics
- 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
NBT - Number And Operations In Base Ten
- 4.NBT.4 - Fluently add and subtract multi-digit whole numbers using the standard algorithm.
- 4.NBT.5 - Multiply a whole number of up to four digits by a one-digit whole number, and multiply two two-digit numbers, using strategies based on place value and the properties of operations. Illustrate and explain the calculation by using equations, rectangular ar
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.
- 3-5-ETS1-2 - Generate and compare multiple possible solutions to a problem based on how well each is likely to meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.