📃Introduction

Welcome to our Variable Story Online Tool Kit. Use this as a teaching resource or provide your students with the link for them to work independently.

Online Tool Kit Summary:

In these activities, learners will explore how parts of speech can be used to strengthen their understanding of variables. They will work towards writing their own mad lib stories before using Scratch (or Python) to code a mad lib story generator.

Finished Scratch Project

This kit contains resources for both synchronous and asynchronous lessons. There is a teacher guide to walk you through leading the challenges over a series of 3 sessions of approximately 30-45 minutes as well as a set of learner challenge handouts for learners to work through on their own as assigned according to your own timeline and discretion. There is also an optional extension activity if you would like to build further on the coding concepts explored in these lessons.

Kit Overview:

• Introduction

• Teacher guide

• Learner introduction instructions

• Learner Challenge

• Learner Challenge 2

• Learner Challenge 3

• Extension Challenge

Required Technology and Materials:

For teachers:

• Computer with internet connection and ability to send learners a document

• For online synchronous activity only: ability to share your screen and speak to the learners

• This can be done with Teams, Zoom, etc.

• https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/ is a free online video conferencing tool that requires no accounts to use

For learners:

• Computer or tablet with internet connection

• Paper and pen/pencils

• Ability to print helpful but not necessary

Note: Upon request, the Tech-Up facilitator can help you find which platform works best for you.

Synchronous Timeline:

Intro and review concepts 10 minutes

Challenge 1 – Introducing variables 10 minutes

Challenge 2 – Doing a mad lib 10 minutes

Challenge 3 – Using variables in Scratch 30 minutes

Challenge 4 – Making a mad lib 30 minutes

Optional extension 1 – Using lists in Scratch 30-45 minutes

Extending into Python

Asynchronous Timeline:

Challenge 1 – Review parts of speech, brainstorming words, variables in scratch (offline and online) 30 minutes

Challenge 2 – Planning your mad lib (offline) 30 minutes

Challenge 3 – Making a mad lib in Scratch (online) 30 minutes

Optional extension 1 – Using lists in Scratch 30-45 minutes

Extending into Python

Curriculum links:

ADST Ideating

• Generate potential ideas and add to others’ ideas

Prototyping

• Outline a general plan, identifying tools and materials

Sharing

• Decide on how and with whom to share their product

• Demonstrate their product and describe their process

Applied Technologies

• Use familiar tools and technologies to extend their capabilities when completing a task

• Choose appropriate technologies to use for specific tasks

• Demonstrate a willingness to learn new technologies as needed

English Language Arts

Comprehend and connect (reading, listening, viewing)

• Identify how differences in context, perspectives, and voice influence meaning in texts

• Understand how literary elements, techniques, and devices enhance and shape meaning

Create and communicate (writing, speaking, representing)

• Use and experiment with oral storytelling processes

• Transform ideas and information to create original texts

Core Competencies

• Communicating

• Answering the reflection questions to explain their thinking

• Communicating their ideas and explaining their code with their family, teacher, and peers

• Creative thinking

• Adapting their code to perform the same task in a different way

• Extending their code to go beyond the main challenge – seeing opportunities to build on what they’ve created and how it could be used to facilitate different goals

• Critical and reflective thinking

• Debugging their code

• Analyzing their task and determining how to accomplish it using the code blocks they’re provided

• Personal awareness and responsibility

• Persevering through difficult coding tasks and working towards finding a solution

• If assigned as a self-paced lesson, managing your time appropriately and creating a plan for finishing the assignment

• Developing and utilizing strategies to manage frustrating situations when coding

• Seeking feedback