What's Going On? October 30th through November 3rd

Thought for the Week

Our first quarter will end on November 3rd.  Please keep the following quote in mind as you look to finish the first part of the year and make goals for the next. I am here to help support you in achieving your goals!

App Development

This week, students will take on the "TextField Code Challenge".  Students will have the opportunity to work on their own, with support from me and their coding partners, to create a variety of TextFields and process the information entered into them by our app user.  Once we finish this, students will move into their second End-Of-Unit-App-Challenge for the year.  Students will create an app called "Multiply" which will serve as a simple calculator.  Students will be able to extend their knowledge by implementing "conditional" statements to make decisions within our running app.  Students will also have a chance to place more emphasis on the design of their project.

AP Computer Science Principles: DEADLINE APPROACHING!!!!!

AP Exam Information

Please check out this link to find out more information on how to register for the AP Exam.  To avoid a late fee, students must register for all exams by 11:59 p.m. on November 8, 2023.

This week, our first focus will be on wrapping up our Activity 1.2.1 "Catch a Turtle".  In this project, students have been introduced to the concept of functions in order to manage the complexity of our programs.  The concept of hiding the details of our program to make it more understandable is known as "Abstraction".

Once we wrap up this activity and have a working game, we will move on to the second phase: creating a leaderboard.  Students will learn to work with multiple Python files in order to further manage the complexity of our program.  Students will also learn how to read from and write to a text file in order to maintain a record of our game's high scores.

What's Going On? October 23rd through October 25th

 Thought for the Week

Modified Schedule This Week

This week, we will have school Monday-Wednesday, with Wednesday as an early release day.  On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, we will see all eight classes.

App Development

During this shortened week, after their study on buttons, students will dive into "text fields".  This element will help us to get input from the user.  We will take a look at how to access text entered into the text field by the user.  We will also learn how to work with that accessed text and make decisions within our program.  We will also learn how to access numerical values entered by the user and do some mathematical calculations.

AP Computer Science Principles

This week, students will continue their work with Activity 1.2.1: Catch a Turtle.  For this project, students will start to think about game elements associated with a project.  Last week, we created our turtle objects and completed some of the setup.  This week, we will get the turtle to "jump" around the screen and add a scoring element.  With this project, students will be introduced to the concept of "functions".

AP Exam Information

Please check out this link to find out more information on how to register for the AP Exam.  To avoid a late fee, students must register for all exams by 11:59 p.m. on November 8, 2023.

What's Going On? October 16th through October 20th

Thought for the Week

 

App Development

We will start this week by taking a look at Buttons.  We have learned how to add a button to our view, but it hasn't done much yet.  This week, we will learn how to trigger events and make things happen when we press the button.  Additionally, we will spend some time considering the design of a button and learn how to add many modifiers to enhance their look.

AP Computer Science Principles

For the first part of the week, students will work on their first summative projects for the year.  For this
project, students must demonstrate their ability to use variables, loops, and conditionals while using the Python Turtle drawing tools to create a colorful, animated piece of art.  This assignment is very closely related to what students will be expected to create for our AP "Performance Task".  For this assignment, students will create a functional program and then answer some analysis questions about their code.  All summative projects are due by Wednesday.

Once we have wrapped up our first summative, students will start investigating the concept of "abstraction".  We will spend some time looking at code and learning how to make it more efficient through the addition of "functions".

AP Exam Information

Please check out this link to find out more information on how to register for the AP Exam.  To avoid a late fee, students must register for all exams by 11:59 p.m. on November 8, 2023.

What's Going On? October 9th through October 13th

 Thought for the Week

App Development

At the start of this week, we will continue our study of variables, constants, and data types.  Once we complete our group demonstration, students will work more independently on the "Variables Code Challenge".  In this assignment, students will work on creating, modifying, and combining variables to be presented as output in our programs.  Once we have a firm grasp on how to create single variables, we will start using them to perform calculations using some basic computer science operators.  Our operators include addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.  We will also learn about the "modulus" operator which is used to calculate the remainder after division.

AP Computer Science Principles

This week, we will continue working with the Turtle class in our "Turtles in Traffic" project.  Once this is complete, students will move into our first summative for the semester.  During this summative, students will use the Turtle class in order to program and create a drawing animation of their own design.  Within this summative, students will code using variables, loops, conditionals, and arrays.  Students will also reflect on their program creation by answering some questions about their code.  This is the first look at what students might be expected to create for the AP Performance task that will be submitted to the AP board in May.

What's Going On? October 2nd through October 6th

Thought for the Week

Homecoming Events

Check out the plan for our Homecoming events for the week.

App Development

This week, we will dive into our second unit of the year: Multiply.  To start off this week, we will complete our pre-unit app called "Repeat After Me".  In this app, students will experiment with variables, textfields, buttons, and more.  This app will serve as the foundation for our unit.  Once we complete this app, we will spend some time talking about design, (including Apple's specific HIGS), where to get help interpreting Apple's documentation, and how to create an algorithm to solve a problem.

AP Computer Science Principles

To start off this week, we will take a look at Activity 1.1.7: Traversing Turtles.  Students will be introduced to the concept of an "array" as a way to manage some of the complexity of our program.  At the end of the week, we will work on Activity 1.1.8: Turtles in Traffic.  In this example, students will compare the position of different turtle objects and determine when they collide using "if...else" statements.