Unit 6: Functions

8-10 yrs old

11-13 yrs old

14-18 yrs old

Computer Science

Explore the concept of a function, tasks or procedures that are used frequently within the same program.

Submitted By: Minecraft Education

October 2, 2020

Lesson Plan
My Notes

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Skills

Critical Thinking
Project Based Learning

External References

Classroom Presentation

Coding with Minecraft 6-Functions-Presentation

Educator guide

Coding with Minecraft 6-Functions-Educator guide

Overview Video

Functions Overview Video

Student Workbook

Learning Objectives

2-AP-13 Decompose problems and subproblems into parts to facilitate the design, implementation, and review of programs.
2-AP-14 Create procedures with parameters to organize code and make it easier to reuse.
3A-CS-01 - Explain how abstractions hide the underlying implementation details of computing systems embedded in everyday objects.
3A-AP-13 Create prototypes that use algorithms to solve computational problems by leveraging prior student knowledge and personal interests.

Guiding Ideas

All of the following lessons are approximately 45-60 minutes, depending on how much time you give students to explore the coding activities.

Lesson A: Introduction to functions

Lesson B: Coding with functions (Please note that depending on time, this lesson may be broken into two parts by separating the coding activities into separate sessions.)

Lesson C: Building on functions

Lesson D: Get creative with functions

Please review the Coding With Minecraft Educator Preparation Video and Educator Guide attached for additional details.

Student Activities

In this unit, we’ll explore the concept of a function. Often in programming, there are tasks or procedures that are used frequently within the same program. Rather than rewrite the lines of code that perform a particular task each time you need it, you can group that set of instructions together as a function. Grouping frequently used instructions as a function makes your code more efficient. You can write the set of instructions once as a function and from then on simply ‘call’ the function from inside your program whenever you need that task done. A function is usually given a name that describes the task it will perform when called, making your code easier to read, too!

Performance Expectations

By the end of this unit, students will be able to:

Describe the different kinds of coding functions
Understand the importance of functions while playing Minecraft
Understand the importance of functions in coding
Learn about real-life functions and how they can affect situations
Alter the Minecraft landscape through coding with functions.
Design an original creative project to change their Minecraft world through coding an automated solution with functions.

Please review the Assessment Guide for additional details.