Lesson 5.1: Intro to Cloning
Learning Objectives
Students will be able to...
- Explain why prototyping and clones can be useful
- Describe how complex goals can be accomplished using cloning
Materials/Preparation
- Lab 5.1 Handout (Connect the Dots) (Download in Word) (Link to PDF)
- If possible, create large poster-sized versions of the dot grids (each grid is 12 x 3).
Pacing Guide
| Duration | Description |
|---|---|
| 5 minutes | Welcome, attendance, bell work, announcements |
| 10 minutes | Introduce activity |
| 25 minutes | Activity |
| 15 minutes | Debrief and wrap-up |
Instructor's Notes
- Introduce activity
- Inform students that they will be drawing some figures by following specific instructions
- Emphasize that students must follow all instructions in the lab carefully
- Throughout the activity, ask students to think about other ways they could accomplish the same goals and the advantages and disadvantages of each approach.
- Activity
- Split students into groups of at least six. If the number of students is not an exact multiple of six, create a few groups of seven and have students take turns being "active."
- Students should follow the steps in the lab, being careful to act as a group.
- In each part, the group will draw the letter 'C' six times, using slightly different instructions.
- Students should, hopefully, notice that in part 3, they are able to achieve similar but not exactly the same results by all following the same instructions. (Though each student draws a 'C', they are not all in the same location.) In each part, they were able to improve the efficiency and clarity of the instructions.
- Debrief
- Ask each group to share their answers to the questions at the end of each part.
- Discuss how this approach could be applied to coding.
- Introduce the terms "prototyping" and "cloning" as (mostly) synonyms:
- prototyping: creating a single "master" entity that defines the behavior for a group of objects, then creating many copies of the prototype to duplicate the behavior