Adventures in Alice

Learning to use Object Methods

Lesson Plan by Jocelyn Remington, 7-17-2014

Objective: Students will gain a foundation on what object methods can do and how they are applied to accomplish a given goal.

Timeline: This lesson plan can span 2-3 days for younger primary students (K-2) or just one class period for older primary grades (3-5)

Materials:

Alice program installed on student computers

ObjectMethods files 1-5

Part 1:Guided practice, Familiarizing students with methods

  1. Open the Alice file objectMethods1.a2won a computer that all students can see.
  2. Show students how to drop in methods and play their event
  3. This should be a fast demonstration in order to get students excited and get them coding on their own quickly.

Part 2: Independent practice

  1. Guide students through opening objectMethods1.a2w on their computers (or start class with the file open).
  2. Let them try dropping and playing chicken methods on their own.

Part 3: Using Methods to accomplish an easy goal

  1. Guide students through opening the file objectMethods2.a2w on their computer.
  2. Note: K-1 students may need to do this step on a different day, and a whole class teacher demonstration using this file may be necessary.
  3. Students drop chicken methods to get the chicken to the corn.
  4. Guide students through opening the file objectMethods3.a2w on their computer.
  5. Students will again drop chicken methods to get the chicken to the corn in this slightly more complex exercise.
  6. Note: there are several ways to accomplish this goal.

Part 4: Using object methods to accomplish a more complex goal

  1. Guide students through opening the file objectMethods4.a2w on their computer.
  2. Note: K-1 students may need to do this step on a different day, and a whole class teacher demonstration using this file may be necessary.
  3. Students will drop methods to get the chicken to get to the corn without touching the bush.
  4. Note: there are several ways to accomplish this goal.
  5. Guide students through opening the file objectMethods5.a2w on their computer.
  6. Students will drop methods to get the chicken to get to the corn without touching the walls of the maze.
  7. Teach students how to drag the corn to different locations and rewrite their code to get the chicken to the new location.
  8. Note: If students click on the ‘add objects’ button to do more the corn this step can serve as a preliminary introduction into adding and placing objects in a world.