Activity idea: peer challenge

From notebook EDEC-625 Fall 2015, 19 Oct 2015.

Have students in groups. Each group creates a programming challenge for the next group to solve. They have to come up with something that’s within the class’s ability, using the blocks and techniques they’ve all learned up to that point. Ex:

  • Make the sprite draw _______.
  • Make the sprite do _______.
  • Animate a conversation about ____ with appropriate costumes.

Each group formulates a challenge and passes it to the group to their right. They receive a challenge coming from their left, and they have to carry it out.

The idea:

It’s great to solve a challenge… but it’s an even richer task to think up a challenge. You have to see through it, understand how a person might go about it, understand where the pitfalls are (or maybe intentionally place some). That’s good meta-cognition.