Hi Vern and Andy,
I just joined this list and this is exactly the kinds of discussions I'm
looking for. I too am a teacher and will be teaching Python, although this
next semester I will not have an official class, just a python programming club
(at the high school level).
In the past I have done BASIC programming clubs with middle school students but
have moved on to Python instead. The great part about clubs is that they are
voluntary, and students tend to be more motivated than they are in a class. In
these clubs, students often go far beyond where I would expect them to in a
structured class.
Andy, your question is deceptively tough, and I agree with Vern that I would
expect them to get the general idea. I would expect them to have to "mess
around" with Python a bit, though, to get it to work correctly. At any rate,
I've learned in years of teaching to scaffold greatly, even when to me it would
seem like an easy assignment. Perhaps breaking the task up into preliminary,
simpler, versions would be helpful.
Here are some of ideas for assignments that I wrote down on a legal pad
recently, when I was looking forward to teaching Python. Some of these may
seem easy, but they do give a good idea of where a student is at.
1. Write a program that asks students for their two favorite foods and have it
suggest a (concatenation) combination food for them to try (from Michael
Dawson's Python Programming 2nd ed.).
2. Write a program that asks the user for two numbers and then adds them for
the user.
[Actually, number two can lead to many variations, using multiplication, etc.
This would make a great project to show how software can evolve, with the final
version greeting the user, asking what operation to perform and on how many
numbers, etc. This assignment would start out very simple in version 1.0, but
could someday turn into something that would contain a variety of function
calls for factoring numbers, finding the square root, and so on.]
3. Write a program that asks the user for a sentence and then prints it back
in reverse.
[Again, this one could lead to many variations: "now have it print the sentence
back with all the "a" characters changed to "4"s, all the "e"s changed to "3"s,
and so on (leetkey)"]
4. Write a program that asks the user for a number. If the number is odd,
multiply it by three and add one, if it's even, divide by two. Now do the same
with the answer....
5. Write an area-finding program. It asks what shape the user has (square,
rectangle or triangle) and the computes the area depending on what measurements
the user enters.
These are my notes, not the final versions I would present to students, but you
get the idea of how things can go from really simple ("write a program that
asks the user's name and then says hi to him/her by name"), to quite
complicated. Keep working with your students!
Richard
----- Original Message ----
From: Vern Ceder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Andy Judkis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, July 5, 2007 5:44:36 PM
Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] a non-rhetorical question
Hi,
We do brief surveys with 8th and 9th graders, so I'm somewhat familiar
with the age and skill level. I would say that *most* students should be
able to answer this question after 4 weeks (depending on how much
looping they've done, of course). By "answer" I don't mean necessarily
get full credit, but at least get the basic idea right - setting up a
while loop and prompting for user input......
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