This is a performance task where students act as a software engineer to create an algorithm for a robotic process of an everyday activity.  Students cooperatively test and revise their algorithms and the have another team sucessfuly complete their algorithm as well.    

The goal of this activity is to build critical thinking skills and excitement for Computer Science / Computational Thinking, while laying a foundation of fundamental programming concepts. By scaffolding basic concepts like sequencing and algorithms in an unplugged activity, students who are intimidated by computers can still build a foundation of understanding. In this lesson, students will learn how to develop an algorithm and encode it into a program.By "programming" one another to draw pictures, students experience some of the core concepts of programming in a fun and accessible way. The class will start by having students view a video of a simple program demonstrating how to develop instructions for building a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Students will start with simple shapes, and progress to the coding of a specific drawing that other students will then try to replicate (“running the program”). If there is a desire to have a more of a Math slant on the lesson, the drawing could take place on graph paper. Students would then use the coordinates to complete the drawing. 

This lesson is part of the Virginia K-12 Computer Science Pipeline which is partly funded through a GO Virginia grant in partnership with Chesapeake Public Schools, Loudoun County Public Schools, and the Loudoun Education Foundation.  In this lesson, students take on the role of a reporter traveling with Lewis and Clark.  Students program an Ozobot to travel along the path and pause at key sites as students report inportant findings and share artifacts from the expedition.   

Games have been an integral part of human culture throughout history. They not only entertain, but also inform and change us. Today video games designers bring together art & code to immerse their players in a story. There are video games being created to solve real-world problems and video game players solving scientific mysteries.

Vocabulary posters for the Alogrithms & Programming strand for Grade 6. Words included are from the 2017 Computer Science Curriculum Framework.

This lesson integrates computer science through discovering graphing on a coordinate plane for 6th graders all the way to a review for 8th graders with extensions that include slope.

After completing background research on what it was like to live during the colonial times students will be placed in a Minecraft world where they will have to collaborate with a group of classmates to build a colony that provides food and protection since the game will be played in survival mode.

Following Curiosity and Perseverance on Mars often means roving to places with interesting materials  to study, places away from the initial landing site. In this lesson, students experience the processes involved in engineering a communication protocol. To  reach their goal, students must create a calibrated solution within constraints and  parameters of communicating with a rover on Mars. Students will explore the opportunities and challenges of remote robotics by framing the problem around the idea that scientists and computer scientists must work together to successfully program rovers in remote locations like Mars. Students will also explore the idea that a robot simply follows a set of well defined algorithms.  Students will be provided a set of possible courses that their robot must navigate. Students will code their robot to navigate around the obstacles within the course to arrive at a set location.

Students will explore the opportunities and challenges of using renewable energy by selecting a Minecraft Biome and developing a home that utilizes the unique characteristics of that biome to create energy. The lesson is intended to be completed in two different parts. In Part 1, students will learn about how Clean Energy sources can be different based on the biome. They will also familiarize themselves with Minecraft. In Part 2, students will select a specific Minecraft world (6 different biomes) and will design and build a home that uses a renewable energy source unique to that biome.  

Students will work with a partner to pair-program a comparison of two different leaders and their role in the Civil War (Abraham Lincoln/Jefferson Davis, Ulysses S. Grant/Robert E. Lee, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson/Frederick Douglass) using Twinery.org. Their product must also incorporate and attribute existing digital media (i.e.images). Students will then find a partner group that selected different figures and peer review their Twine product with emphasis on usability, content, language, user perspective, image layout/attribution and ease of use. The feedback given must be addressed and incorporated. Students will then complete a Partner Evaluation form to review their experience working with pair programming.This lesson may need to be split across two class periods.

This performance task is a computer science (CS) integration project where your students will take you on a virtual field trip. It can be to a museum, a historical site, a modern destination, a book, a planet or really anywhere. Along the way, they will incorporate CS concepts into their projects including sequences, conditionals, and events to add interactivity. This is a great project for students to share their research and learning from a wide variety of subject areas like social studies, language arts, world languages, history, etc. This unit includes 5th grade standards for the Virginia CS Standards of Learning, but it can easily be adapted for younger and older students. The latest resources for this project can be found at https://sites.google.com/virginia.edu/virtualfieldtrip/resources.