Lesson 19: End of Course Project
Overview
This capstone lesson takes students through the process of designing, developing, and showcasing their own projects!
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:
- 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 Project Planning Guide for each student (or pair).
- (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 Students
- CSF Course D End of Course Project Planning Guide - Project Guide
Support
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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 variety of projects. 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 CSF Course D End of Course 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.
- Create your project
Student Instructions
You have reached the last lesson of Course D! Choose a project to create.
Choose from the following activities:
None
None
None
None
Student Instructions
Create your own basketball game!
Student Instructions
Student Instructions
Create your own dance!
Student Instructions
Create your own drawing!
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.