Bootstrap Light?

[Schmurrs]

I am attempting to teach a Bootstrap based course within some pretty daunting constraints at my high school.  The course meets 4 times a week for 4 weeks ( one of several enrichment classes sophomores are rotated through) for 50 minutes fa day.   Take away 10 minutes per meeting for the usual classroom stuff and I am left with a grand total of 8 hours.  Although the class is mandatory, there are no grades assigned so unless students have an intrinsic motivation to participate they are just marking time. 

At my previous school I had been teaching Program By Design as a full year Pre- AP course with great results. Now i am trying to figure out how to organize a scaled down version of an already scaled down version.  What do you think?

[Schanzer (Director)]

Hi Peter - many teachers in your position have done a compressed version of the course, which removes the videogame AND the Design Recipe, and only covers up to the first half of Unit 3 (Defining Values). From there, they use the Flags Activity as a capstone project, and go deep into order of operations, function composition, ratio and proportion.

Flags itself can be a variable length - students can follow the simple flags at their own pace, and you can devote anywhere from an hour to a week to the project. Many other teachers on this forum have extended the lesson further, with excellent worksheets that ask students to plan out their flags and describe various shapes as fractions of the flag's width and height.

[Schmurrs]

Thank you for your helpful suggestion!  I will take this approach in my next 4-week rotation and report back.

-Peter

On Sun, Oct 23, 2016 at 8:54 AM, Schanzer (Director) <scha...@bootstrapworld.org> wrote:

Hi Peter - many teachers in your position have done a compressed version of the course, which removes the videogame AND the Design Recipe, and only covers up to the first half of Unit 3 (Defining Values). From there, they use the Flags Activity as a capstone project, and go deep into order of operations, function composition, ratio and proportion.

Flags itself can be a variable length - students can follow the simple flags at their own pace, and you can devote anywhere from an hour to a week to the project. Many other teachers on this forum have extended the lesson further, with excellent worksheets that ask students to plan out their flags and describe various shapes as fractions of the flag's width and height.

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[Schmurrs]

" Many other teachers on this forum have extended the lesson further, with excellent worksheets that ask students to plan out their flags and describe various shapes as fractions of the flag's width and height."  

Would anyone care to share their worksheets/suggestions for implementing "Flags" ?

-Peter

[Jeremy Bloch]

Here is a link to a folder that has info about a project that I did with my students last year (8th grade).  We worked on "replica flags" and "personal flags".  I plan to do this again in Jan/Feb, with some changes.  We will make videos in May/June after standardized testing is done. 

Further below I have copied the text of a post I made in February earlier this year. Let me know if you have trouble accessing it or if you have any questions.

Jeremy

earlier post:

I recently completed a "Replica Flag and Personal Banner Project" with my 8th grade math students.  In this project, students created at at least one replica flag, and one personal flag (or "personal banner").  They copied images from WeScheme into a shared Google Slides file, so I have an instant slide show.   They shared links to their programs via Google Classroom, and they also completed an Author's Statement in Google Classroom.

Students enjoyed the project, and I am pleased with how it went, especially for a first time through. I have included links to the slides here, along with the Guidelines for the project.  (I emphasized the importance of making code readable and organized, and including documentation (;semi-colon headers and comments.)

Some context: I am incorporating the Bootstrap 1 curriculum into my 8th grade math course. We did this project during our unit on Transformations. We are saving the video game elements for the Spring, after standardized testing.

http://bitly.com/flag-project-guidelines

http://bitly.com/replica-flags

http://bitly.com/personal-flags

[Lauren Roseberry]

Thank you so much for sharing!!!! This is a great extension to the other version :)

On Saturday, November 5, 2016 at 10:45:06 AM UTC-5, Jeremy Bloch wrote:

Here is a link to a folder that has info about a project that I did with my students last year (8th grade).  We worked on "replica flags" and "personal flags".  I plan to do this again in Jan/Feb, with some changes.  We will make videos in May/June after standardized testing is done. 

Further below I have copied the text of a post I made in February earlier this year. Let me know if you have trouble accessing it or if you have any questions.

Jeremy

earlier post:

I recently completed a "Replica Flag and Personal Banner Project" with my 8th grade math students.  In this project, students created at at least one replica flag, and one personal flag (or "personal banner").  They copied images from WeScheme into a shared Google Slides file, so I have an instant slide show.   They shared links to their programs via Google Classroom, and they also completed an Author's Statement in Google Classroom.

Students enjoyed the project, and I am pleased with how it went, especially for a first time through. I have included links to the slides here, along with the Guidelines for the project.  (I emphasized the importance of making code readable and organized, and including documentation (;semi-colon headers and comments.)

Some context: I am incorporating the Bootstrap 1 curriculum into my 8th grade math course. We did this project during our unit on Transformations. We are saving the video game elements for the Spring, after standardized testing.

http://bitly.com/flag-project-guidelines

http://bitly.com/replica-flags

http://bitly.com/personal-flags

On Sat, Nov 5, 2016 at 10:29 AM, Schmurrs <schmur...@gmail.com> wrote:

" Many other teachers on this forum have extended the lesson further, with excellent worksheets that ask students to plan out their flags and describe various shapes as fractions of the flag's width and height."  

Would anyone care to share their worksheets/suggestions for implementing "Flags" ?

-Peter

On Sat, Nov 5, 2016 at 10:19 AM, Schmurrs <schmur...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thank you for your helpful suggestion!  I will take this approach in my next 4-week rotation and report back.

-Peter

On Sun, Oct 23, 2016 at 8:54 AM, Schanzer (Director) <scha...@bootstrapworld.org> wrote:

Hi Peter - many teachers in your position have done a compressed version of the course, which removes the videogame AND the Design Recipe, and only covers up to the first half of Unit 3 (Defining Values). From there, they use the Flags Activity as a capstone project, and go deep into order of operations, function composition, ratio and proportion.

Flags itself can be a variable length - students can follow the simple flags at their own pace, and you can devote anywhere from an hour to a week to the project. Many other teachers on this forum have extended the lesson further, with excellent worksheets that ask students to plan out their flags and describe various shapes as fractions of the flag's width and height.

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[Schmurrs]

Hi Jeremy,

Thanks for sharing your experience.    Are you restricting your instruction to defining variables that incorporate built-in image functions as in (define stripe (rectangle 10 50 "solid" "blue")) and  not teaching the design of functions like ( define (create-flag stars stripes)(overlay stars stripes)) ?  

Thanks,

Peter

[patr...@frenchamericansf.org]

Peter,

Here is an activity that focuses on the distance formula.

http://www.wescheme.org/view?publicId=9DdhMPNGxq

It is the making of "game" in that there is a player the user controls with the keyboard. The object is to avoid the danger. As it stands now, nothing happens when the danger touches the player. You could add a stop-when event handler to big-bang and check to see if the target and danger are touching with the distance formula (just as it is done in Bootstrap 1). That could be an activity that is viable given your time constraints.

Here is another shorter activity.

http://www.wescheme.org/view?publicId=SYafXSihAY

It should be noted that I shamelessly stole this idea from Mathias Felleisen's 2015 Strange Loop talk. I have used something similar to this by starting with writing a function that calculates the distance a cart travels after t amount of time. Most of the students are not all that excited about the end product. So I then start to transform this into the visual representation of the cart moving across the screen. In the example above, I added some text that explains how far the cart has traveled. To see the output, type (render [some amount of time]) in the interactions pane. To fully animate the project, type (animate render). Once kids got the animation working, they were much more excited. Then they wanted to customize their animation by changing the object moving across the page, or adding a sun to the background, etc.

Here is another distance animation. This time I use everybody's favorite "two trains are traveling toward each other" word problem.

http://www.wescheme.org/view?publicId=BbZis3yCZK

You'll see a section of the code that is clearly marked for student input. Just erase the code in here and have the students define the starting distance between trains, a function that calculates the distance train 1 has traveled, a function that calculates the distance train 2 has traveled, and a function that calculated the distance between trains. Run the program and press the space bar to "step through" the word problem one hour at a time.

Lastly, here is an activity on absolute value (if your class covers some math-y stuff like that).

http://www.wescheme.org/view?publicId=6RorsjCvpZ

In the student section, write a function that calculates absolute value. In the interactions pane the students can run their function with (absolute-value [some number]) and you can get a visual representation of what absolute value is with (show-abs [some number]).

I hope these activities are useful.

Regards,

Patrick

[Jeremy Bloch]

Hi Peter,

We did both.    As I remember, the curriculum has a nice intro to defining functions that looks at making green triangles of different sizes, and then there are some exercises for defining different functions.  This January I will be making my second pass through.  Some students pick up on it more quickly/throughly than others, and as usual, I will try to organize it with a low threshold and a high ceiling.

Best,

Jeremy

[Gregory Marton]

Patrick's train and cart reminded me of this variant on the rocket lesson that I've used:

   http://www.wescheme.org/view?publicId=GJSzfpHHgW

I intended it as a one-off activity for non-bootstrap students to give them a little taste. It has a pretty low floor: most kids get something out of it even if you hold their hand all the way through, and some will happily jump ahead. It has a pretty high ceiling (excuse the pun): most students won't "finish" or be bored, even after they've done everything, and it's easy to give them more to do.

But! Caveat!

1) This activity encourages play over design: the design recipe goes by the wayside as students explore the various possible functions they can use, and various inputs to those functions, compositions of those functions, etc. If one wanted to stick to the design recipe, it would lose much of its appeal. I could name the first function 7ms instead of rocket-height, but EXAMPLEs for later functions are both hard to discover and seemingly worthless: you can use fibonacci without understanding what it is at all. The path of least resistance is to (start fibonacci) instead of saying (start rocket-height). While play is arguably very valuable, the design recipe is easily more so (everybody plays; the design recipe differentiates unproductive from focused play, throw-away code from engineering), and it's not that easy a habit to build, so endangering the design recipe habit by tossing it for one activity is not worth it.

2) This critique applies to Patricke's cart and train also. It assumes/teaches a competing way to do animation from how animation is done in BS:1. Neither is better, and brief exposure to "more than one way to do it" is generally good. But if students get very invested in animation-by-specifying-location, that's not a good setup for then switching mindsets to the previous-location-to-next-location-transformation way.

Grem

Gregory A. Marton

Cell: 617-858-0775 | Calendar | Plus | Web | Give the gift of (anonymous) feedback!

[David Hardt]

Hi, Jeremy and Peter,

I want to incorporate as much of the Algebra 1 curriculum as I can into my Math 1 classes, but have 18 weeks only (semester schedule).  Therefore I appreciate the ideas for projects smaller than the full video game.  Any new smaller project ideas since 2016 by the way?

I see the results of the flags project, and it looks great.  I am confused a bit though:  how do the students overlay different shapes to make the flags, and then how do they share them?  Perhaps the answer to this question is in the folder Jeremy mentions (I have requested access.  I hope someone can give me access to those materials!).

The Algebra 1 bootstrap curriculum doesn't seem to teach how to overlay the shapes.  Or does it:  is that the screenshot idea?  Maybe a basic background and then overlay shapes on top of it?

Anyway, what help anyone can lend to my understanding the flag project better, and having access to existing "wheels" would be much appreciated!

Thanks,

David Hardt

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[Jeremy Bloch]

Hi David,

I have been doing a flag project every year. We also make video games, but I think the flag project can stand on its own.  How much time do you think you can devote to coding, and on what kind of schedule?  

Flags are created using the put-image function. The Algebra 1 course now covers this in two of the Supplemental Lessons ("Manipulating Images" and "Making Flags").

The Bootstrap Hour of Code, is a great way to introduce students to coding in WeScheme. The Hour of Code finishes up (Lessons 12-14) with an introduction and practice on using the put-image function.    You can transition from that into a flag project.

The flag project that I do has included "replica" and "personal" flags.  This year, I skipped the replica flags and went right into the personal flags, which are generally more engaging.

I showed students some example WeScheme programs that model how to create a simple flag, such as this(1), this(2), and this(3). They show how to define a value for an image, and then how to use the put-image function to assemble the flag.   The code is separated by headings for:

; define the background

; define parts of the flag

; define myflag using the put-image function

; display myflag

I have students share their flag in a Google slideshow.  I put each of their names on a separate slide, and they copy/paste or insert the final flag image into their slide.  You can have them add a link their program on the slide, or share in separately in a Google form. (I use the latter approach, and also have them answer some questions about their work.)

The simple assignment for the personal flag is to: "Write a program that produces an original graphic design. The design should feature your name and at least one image that is significant to you personally. Credit will be given for visual appeal and for complexity, including using a variety of functions to manipulate images."

I hope this is helpful to your or others. Please ask any follow-up questions.

--- Jeremy

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[Chloe Schaefer]

Hi.

i accidentally got put into this email thread, and i was wondering if by any chance, someone could take me off this email thread. 

thanks!

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[Schanzer (Director)]

Hi Les - did you want to be removed from the entire Bootstrap-Teacher listserv? If so, I can do that right away. 

However, there is no way to be removed from an individual thread (our new discussion forum, discourse.BootstrapWorld.org does have this feature!). One option is to change your group notification settings from “every message” to “daily digest” — this way you’ll never get more than one email per day about any new posts to the Google Group.

Emmanuel

[Chloe Schaefer]

yes, i’m Les’ daughter, he accidentally used my email address to sign up for this

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[Schanzer (Director)]

Ah yes, that happens. I've been there with my parents, too. :)

I'll take you off the list. Sorry for the inconvenience!

[schaef...@gmail.com]

T think I had an account on my daughters gmail. My gmail is still good.  schaef...@gmail.com

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[David Hardt]

Thanks, Jeremy,

This helps me a lot.  Sorry to have been so late replying.

I do have at least one student who just wasn't into the game idea, and was very warm toward making a flag image or two.

I can use the links you provided to help her have a template and some specific functions useful to this non-game purpose.

Thank you again for the help in understanding and implementing the Flag Project.

Best wishes,

David Hardt

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