8th Grade Homework Blog

Friday, September 12, 2025
We're jumping into an all-new project that's loosely linked to Begin The Game--it's called A Unified Game! Today, to prepare, we watch a short Unity tutorial, and begin to prepare to blast off!
The typing lesson today is #240!

I CAN: execute higher-level coding functions in order to assemble a playable game in a professional engine!

Thursday, September 11, 2025
Today is the final in-class day for the Shopping Spree assignment! If students do not finish this today, they will have to come in during intervention, homeroom, before school, or after school. TRY NOT TO PUT THIS OFF! Assignments can snowball if they aren't taken care of! Don't let your life become a snowball.

Don't forget!: Today, we have a new homework assignment: the Google Sheets exit slip.

The typing lesson today is #238!

I CAN: use spreadsheets to create real budgets to use in your everyday life.

Wednesday, September 10, 2025
It's the week of the Shopping Spree! We'll have it until tomorrow. Go hard!

The typing lesson today is #236!

I CAN: use spreadsheets to create real budgets to use in your everyday life.

Tuesday, September 9, 2025
You're likely done with buying stuff by now--concentrate on making your Shopping Spree beautiful!

The typing lesson today is #234! 

I CAN: use spreadsheets to create real budgets to use in your everyday life.

Monday, September 8, 2025
We are knee-deep into the Shopping Spree assignment, and will be working on it for quite a while. Students are to have Google Spreadsheets open during the course of this week and start their shopping, formatting, and editing.

The typing lesson today is #233!

I CAN: use spreadsheets to create real budgets to use in your everyday life.

Friday, September 5, 2025
We have finished with tutorials, and will be working on the Shopping Spree assignment for most of next week! Students will be putting finishing touches on their assignments by 9/11, hopefully.

The typing lesson today is #230!
I CAN: use spreadsheets to create real budgets to use in your everyday life.

Thursday, September 4, 2025
On this, the final day of Shopping Spree tutorials, we handle the the final part of the tutorial, in which we discuss charts and graphs within the program. Once students have a professional understanding of this topic, they are well prepared to begin the actual assignment. This assignment will continue into next week!

The typing lesson today is #228!   

I CAN: use spreadsheets to create real budgets to use in your everyday life.

Wednesday, September 3, 2025
Today, we learn the ins and outs of Google Spreadsheets today as we move further into the program. We watched the the second third of the tutorial as we moved along. Today, we also formally introduced the Shopping Spree assignment in class, and gave the students a chance to understand how they're applying the skills they've been learning to the assignment itself.

The typing lesson today is #223!  
I CAN: use spreadsheets to create real budgets to use in your everyday life.

Tuesday, September 2, 2025
Now that Begin the Game is complete, we begin a new project, the Shopping Spree! Today, we watch the first third of the tutorial video that is going to teach us how to use Google Sheets, the program we'll be concentrating on with this assignment. We will be doing a bit of practice with the program.

Today's typing lesson is #220! 

I CAN: use spreadsheets to create real budgets to use in your everyday life.

Friday, August 29, 2025
Today, we finish the Begin the Game activity.

Today's typing lesson is #218!

I CAN: learn simple coding concepts and functions. 

Thursday, August 28, 2025
Still moving forward with Begin the Game! I am super excited to see the results of your hard work. We'll have until Friday to work on it!

Today's typing lesson is #213!

I CAN: learn simple coding concepts and functions.

Wednesday, August 27, 2025
We're continuing our work on Begin the Game! If you love coding, awesome! I'm down with that. You can try to do all five of the criteria listed on the assignment page for a fun challenge! If you hate coding, that's okay! Thank you for trying it out with me. Do, at minimum, two of the criteria on the assignment page, then move on to anything else on the What Do I Do board.

Today's typing lesson is #211!

I CAN: learn simple coding concepts and functions.

Tuesday, August 26, 2025
It's a quick project, but Friday will be the the final day to work on Begin the Game! It's short and simple, and is meant to be a quick primer on coding to see if you're interested in moving on with the activity at the end of the year. We'll talk more about that soon!

Today's typing lesson is #209!

I CAN: learn simple coding concepts and functions.

Monday, August 25, 2025
Today, we finish the basics of the Scratch activity. Now that we've learned some very rudimentary skills of programming, we'll see if we can refine them by doing an assignment that dives further into Scratch from Tuesday to Friday.

Let's start the typing lessons with #205!

I CAN: learn simple coding concepts and functions.

Friday, August 22, 2025

Let's start off with a fun mini-activity: coding! Today, we're doing an activity on MIT's Scratch program that teaches us how to make Pong (well, Breakout, really, but let's not split hairs) on our very own! We'll be focusing on this activity today and tomorrow.

Let's start the typing lessons with #203!

I CAN: learn simple coding concepts and functions.

Thursday, August 21, 2025

Welcome to Computers with Mr. Alexander! Today, we simply went over the guidelines and regulations of the classroom. I handed out the syllabus and we discussed various classroom rules.

I CAN: learn about my classroom.

I CAN: familiarize myself with a webpage.