Structure of the Course

Each of the sessions described to the right are divided into several shorter lessons. Each lesson shows them how to program something in Python and then asks them to try out the code. The lessons can be printed on paper if you like to hand out to students.

The lessons can also be viewed online using a web browser. Each lesson presents some code in a picture in the web page. By clicking on that picture the code can be downloaded. You need only select "Save As" when prompted to download the code to your computer. This might be preferable if student typing skills are limited since typing in some of the examples might take a bit.

However, typing can also be beneficial because students will begin to get familiar with the error messages that can result when you type something wrong and then try to run it.

The sidebar in each lesson is italicized and helps to further explain the objectives of the lesson.

This course consists of four sessions containing 10 lessons. Each session is probably about 1 hour long. However, that might vary widely depending on the audience. Sessions can be divided into smaller pieces if needed to accomodate a different schedule but each lesson should be taught in one sitting if possible.

The Lessons

Each of the sessions with the students consists of one or more lessons. Each of the sessions below present you with the handouts for the lessons and some discussion of how to teach that section of the course.

When printing these lessons for students you may wish to change the zoom factor of the page size by selecting page setup for your browser. Generally a zoom of 70% will work well for printing them.

Session One

In the first session you want to familiarize the students with the programming environment called IDLE. IDLE is just a program that helps us write Python programs. One nice feature of Python lets us use it like a calculator. You can hand out the following handouts to them in this session.

Session Two

In the second session you introduce the students to Turtle graphics using the xturtle package. You will also want to give them the xturtle quick reference sheet along with the lesson handouts. The quick reference shows them what commands they can send to a turtle.

The students also learn how to use a for loop to repeat code. In lesson 6 they learn how to draw regular polygons and then they take this to the extreme to learn to draw circles.

Session Three

In this session students learn to define and use functions. First a mathematical concept of a function is graphed using Turtle graphics so students can compare the way to define a function in Mathematics to how functions are defined in Python.

Then functions are used to draw squares at random points on the screen. Students get to extend the square drawing program to draw houses of differing sizes on the screen. Again, the students should have the xturtle Quick Reference guide available to them for these lessons.

Session Four

In this session students learn how to program in an event-driven framework. The students get to write a Etch-A-Sketch program that responds to mouse clicks and key presses on the keyboard.

Session Five

This is probably session 5,6,7 and maybe even 8. There is a lot to learn to program a Solitaire game. However, this can be a fun project to give the students and let them work on for a while.

Playing Asteroids

This begins a new group of sessions where students learn to program by implementing a game of Asteroids.

Creating a Draw Program

In this series of lessons you create a drawing program that you an use to draw some very nice line drawing pictures.