Course material for USSTEAM Java I
This course structures material over 15, 1 hour long classes targeting students age 12+ with little or no prior programming experience.
Each class teaches a new fundamental skill to Java programming and challenges students to apply the new skill with a 'Code Challenge,' a brief excercise allowing students to apply their theoretical knowledge with practical programming skill.
It is recommended that Classes 8 and 9 be taken to review past material and answer any outstanding questions, included is an optional midyear 'exam' and course reflection as well as several challenge assignments that could be assigned to advanced students or performed as a class excercise.
It is recommended that Classes 13, 14, and 15 be allocated entirely to the final project, where students are tasked with applying all of their skills to build a small game, recommended are Hangman and Battleship, for each of which are included sample solutions.
Students should understand and be able to navigate the tools required to make a Java program
Students will be comfortable will all primitive types in Java and be able to choose how to represent real-world data
Students will understand how a program will run and be able to control the order in which code is executed, making use of if statements and loops
Students will understand the purpose of and be comfortable implementing methods that serve a specific need
Students will use arrays to represent more complex data
Students will plan, implement, debug and share their skills as a small game
Because project-based learning is the most effective, a large portion of the course is allocated to developing a small game in order to demonstrate the practical side of programming.
While there are a number of suitable final projects, given the target audience of this course, a simple game is an appealing way to attract interest as well implement all of the skills learned through the course.
Depending on the students' level of mastery, recommended are Hangman -- an easier implementation that students should be able to achieve with only basic guidance and instructor direction -- and Battleship -- a much more challenging game targeted towards students who demonstrate high aptitude and high interest.
For each of these I have included samples written primarily by students, Hangman Battleship
All material is owned by Andrew Cabey and Ryan Marten
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Material is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International, free for non-commercial use