OOP4Fun with Greenfoot

Teacher introduces today's session, reflects on the previous session and sets challenging goals.

After the teacher introduces today's session, reflects on the previous session and sets challenging goals, the rush-hour challenge begins. Students are given the gamified assignment to find instructions, download and install greenfoot (yet unknown development tool for them) on their computers. The first three students are given tokens of appreciation (badges, points, scores, sweets etc.).

The second surprise for them is that in the next 30 minutes they will be playing games with the teacher. This is a teacher guided session on opening, compiling and running one-two simple example projects (on the introductory to medium level of complexity). This will show students the basic elements of the Greenfoot development environment as well as of basic procedures of handling the project files and assets.

The students will be grouped in the teams (3-4 students each) and will be given a simple assignment. Teams should change “something” in the given example project to make the game surprising or fun.

Team collaboration and coding will have teams work collaboratively on trying to change something in the given examples. If they break the code beyond the line of being able to fix it on their own they can ask for help from the teacher or can download the “start version” again. This will be a good example why we should use version control systems when coding.

One or two teams will present their work for peer review and feedback and the group will discuss the results along with the teacher.

At home for homework, each student should search for examples of Greenfoot games and should introduce his class to his favorite example by uploading a link, description of what makes it his favorite example and two-three screenshots of the development environment and running game.

As part of the gamification and motivation via competition, each student should vote for three best games (it is not allowed to vote for his own game). The winners are announced and awarded with tokens of appreciation (badges, points, scores, sweets etc.).

Teacher introduces today's session, reflects on the previous session and sets challenging goals

Students conduct independent research on what objects are to be presented on the stage of the game they are developing.

Teacher guided discussion on recognized objects and their classification in classes.

Teacher guided tutorial on creating selected objects in the game, emphasizing classes and objects.

Formation of teams (3-4 students each) and assignment of specific project that will build on the outputs of the previous activity.

Teams work collaboratively on designing and implementing their assigned projects.

One or two teams will present their work and the group will discuss the results along with the teacher.

Each team uploads their project, and peers provide constructive feedback via homework activity. Each student will evaluate one-two solutions from other teams.

Each team will utilize the knowledge by defining game objects in the project they are working on continuously through the whole year.