Utah Introduction to Python 1

In this lesson, students are introduced to coding with turtle graphics. Students will begin to recognize programs as sequences and groups of commands. Students will learn a few basic commands and then apply them right away by writing their first program.

In this lesson, students learn about some of the different types of programming languages and categories they may fall into (low vs high level languages, compiled vs interpreted languages). They also look at a timeline of programming languages and explore why one language would be used over another.

In this lesson, students will be introduced to the layout of Tracy’s grid world and will learn how to use coordinate pairs to locate Tracy on the coordinate plane. They will add to the list of commands they know and can use to create Tracy graphics.

In this lesson, students review content with a 10 question End-of-Unit Quiz.

In this short lesson, students will be introduced to the idea of checking their own programs. They will gain insight on how autograders should be used and what other ways they can be sure they have successfully completed a program before moving on.

In this lesson, students will learn how to use the left, right, and setheading/seth commands in order to move Tracy to more locations on the canvas. They will now have many commands that can be used to have Tracy create more complex graphics.

In this lesson, students are introduced to for loops. They learn how for loops simplify the process of making small changes to a program and help avoid repeating code. For loops are written like this:

for i in range (4):
    // Code to be repeated 4 times

In this lesson, students are introduced to the ability to turn Tracy at any angle. With this feature, Tracy can now draw diagonal lines which opens up the possibility to draw multiple shapes that weren’t previously available.

In this lesson, students review content with a 10 question End-of-Unit Quiz.

In this lesson, students learn how to use comments to describe their programs. Comments are helpful because they allow programmers to leave notes about the programs they are writing. Students will also learn about the different types of comments that can be used and the benefits of using them.

In this short lesson, students will be introduced to the rules for naming elements in their code. Variables and functions that are used inside their programs will be named by students, so the following guidelines should be obeyed to be sure that the programs written are readable and successful.

In this lesson, students are introduced to functions. They start with the basics of defining a function and why we need them and will revisit a program they coded earlier in the unit to rewrite it using functions.

In this lesson, students are able to add some flair to their turtle graphics programs by controlling color, pensize, and fill. These new commands are added to the list of commands that have been already practiced in order to allow for more creativity in student programs.

In this lesson, students will learn how to use the write function to add text labels to their programs.

In this lesson, students are introduced to the concept of Top Down Design. Top Down Design is the process of breaking down a program into functions or smaller parts to avoid repeated code and to make our programs more readable.

In this lesson, students review content with a 10 question End-of-Unit Quiz.

Students will get a chance to get creative with Tracy commands and concepts in this lesson. They will apply all they’ve learned to create a mural design.

In this lesson, students will learn about a fundamental aspect of every programming language: Variables. A variable is something that stores information in a program that can be used later.

In this lesson, students learn about 4 different data types and what kind of information they hold. They also learn how to use the type function to determine the data type of a value and use casting to switch values between different data types.

In this lesson, students will dive deeper into the Strings data type, learning how to concatenate strings and use escape sequences.

In this lesson, students will learn how to call methods on values and use three different string methods (upper, lower, and capitalize) to alter text.

In this lesson, students will learn how to incorporate user input into their programs. Students will learn how to request user input as both strings and integers, store the input in a variable, and how format can be used to create messages.

In this lesson, students will dive deeper into the concept of functions by exploring how to use parameters to customize their code.

In this lesson, students will dive into common errors they may run into while developing Tracy programs and learn some techniques for debugging their programs.

In this lesson, students will learn how to allow the user to interact with their programs using their mouse. They will learn how to allow interaction when the user clicks on Tracy or anywhere on the canvas as well as how to effectively use variables inside clickable programs.

In this lesson, students will expand their knowledge of for loops. They are aware that for loops execute the same lines of code a given number of times but, in this lesson, will learn that i is actually a variable that can be used to control commands inside the loop as it is running.

In this lesson, students will learn the extended parameters that can be used to control the value of i in for loops. They will then be able to use the variable i to control much more of their code by setting specific values.

In this lesson, students review content with a 10 question End-of-Unit Quiz.

Students will get a chance to get creative with Tracy commands and concepts in this lesson. They will apply all they’ve learned to create a depiction of a common cycle of their choosing.

In this lesson, students will learn how to use If Statements which will allow them to use conditions to determine how their code should run. They will also learn how to use string comparison methods inside if statements.

In this lesson, students will learn how to expand on If Statements by including a way to have Tracy make decisions between multiple scenarios.

In this lesson, students will learn why we may want to return values from functions and how to implement this in their own programs. They will also take a deeper dive into the in keyword and how it can be used in programs.

In this lesson, students will learn that while loops allow code to be executed repeatedly based on a condition. They will also be warned that infinite loops are created if the exit condition of the while loop is never met, causing the code inside the while loop to repeat continuously which causes the program to crash and will learn how the break statement can be used to avoid this.

In this lesson, students review content with a 10 question End-of-Unit Quiz.

In this lesson, students will put together all the concepts they’ve learned thus far. They will be able to use top down design and to write programs that will solve complex problems.

In this lesson, students review content with a 25 question End-of-Unit Quiz.

Students will get a chance to apply all of the Tracy commands and concepts they have learned throughout the course in this lesson to create an on-screen calculator.