Secondary Mathematics

Drawing with code.org

Express course (2021) : Lesson 5- Creating art with code

Students will solve puzzles that may lead to the building of an intuitive understanding of geometry, angles, and measurement. A lesson plan is available on the teacher's account,

Coding concepts: Sequential, repeating events 

Extension: Code with Anna & Elsa

Student projects: 1 , 2

Coding: First Scratch Challenge

Students can watch the introduction video to scratch and remix the  starter code.

The background of the starter code is a coordinate plane.

Students can build an intuitive knowledge of the coordinate or rely on their knowledge of coordination to move the sprite around the stage and build coding skills.

Student 1st scratch creation

Geometry with scratch

Drawing a square starter

Same as for the drawing with code.org, students will build an intuitive understanding of angles and geometry when creating drawing programs. They can remix the Drawing Challenge Starter Code to draw a square.  

Student Project 1

Additional resource: (87) Repeat in Scratch - YouTube 

Extension: Students can remix a Draw square code to create other geometrical shapes. 

Student Project 2

Geometric Art - Spirals 

Student will write a pseudo code (in plain English) for this spiral then transcribe it into a code on scratch.

Starter code

Student project 1

Extension: Students can remix Student project 1 to

1. Draw the same spiral from outside to inside.

2. Draw a spiral star.

Students can remix “Mayan Pseudo Code” and use blocks/variables in the code.

Concentric Circles

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/538525021/

Students will build an intuitive understanding of circles.

Students will explore what sections of blocks or individual blocks do. They will comment sections of blocks/ or individual blocks.

Students can also remix the code to create circles that decrease in size.

Student project 1

Coding concepts: Pen tool, Repetitions, Variables 

Developing Probability Concepts in Scratch and Social Justice

Coin Simulation

Students can explore a “fair” coin flip simulation on scratch  (comment the code), and alter the code to deepen their understanding of probability and social issue.

Students can edit the code to create an “unfair coin”.

They can discuss the difference between experimental and theoretical probability.

Student project 1

Extension: Remix the code to model a dice roll with Scratch (fair die or unfair die, it’s up to you)

Alternative situation: Females on Juries Random Simulation 

Quadratic Functions (understanding and graphing)

Students will run the “Quadratic Function” code and change the parameters to explore the changes in the graph.

They will do a code walk-through, writing comments explaining what each block of the code does.

Students will generate a new code to sketch a parabola. They can use the existing code or they can think of a new way to sketch the graph using a different algorithm.

Students can add some more features to their code to include more concepts related to quadratic functions. The following are some options (Low floor wide wall high ceiling):

• Show coordinates of the vertex

  • Show coordinates of the roots

  • Label the coordinates of any point on the graph as we the cursor on the graph

  • Ask user the format of the quadratic function first (standard vs vertex form vs factored form) and then sketch the graph corresponding to the user’s choice 

Travel Graphs (linear equations)

1) Students will explore a teacher-created travel graph and attempt at answering the following questions:

• What does stationary mean (as a concept and on the graph)?

• What does a steep graph indicate? (going a big distance-vertically-in a short amount of time-horizontally: aka going fast)

• What does a shallow graph indicate? (going a small distance-vertically-in a short amount of time-horizontally aka going slow)

• What is a dimension? 

• How many dimensions are there on the graph? 

2) Students will explore the scratch code in groups (comment it). They will also  extract data from the graph.

3) Students will explore and remix the scratch code to create the journey of two airplanes travelling the same distance (going to the same destination) at different speeds.