One of the most magnificent structures in the computer science world is the function. Functions (sometimes called procedures) are mini programs that you can use over and over inside of your bigger program. This lesson will help students intuitively understand why combining chunks of code into functions can be such a helpful practice.

Students will begin to understand how functions can be helpful in this fun and interactive Minecraft adventure!

Students have practiced creating impressive designs in Artist and navigating mazes in Bee, but today they will use functions to harvest crops in Harvester. This lesson will push students to use functions in the new ways by combining them with `while` loops and `if / else` statements.

Students will be introduced to using functions with the Artist. Magnificent images will be created and modified. For more complicated patterns, students will learn about nesting functions by calling one function from inside another.

The next four lessons provide an opportunity for students to put their coding skills to use in a capstone project. This project will help individuals gain experience with coding and produce an exemplar to share with peers and loved ones. Intended to be a multi-lesson or multi-week experience, students will spend time exploring brainstorming, learning about the design process, building, and presenting their final work.

In the explore stage, students will play with pre-built examples of projects in both Artist and Sprite Lab for inspiration. Next, students will learn about the design process and how to implement it in their own projects. They will then be given the space to create their own project in Artist, Sprite Lab, or another interface that they have become familiar with (this is likely the longest stage of the project). Finally, students will be able to present their finished work to their peers.

In this set of puzzles, students will begin with an introduction (or review depending on the experience of your class) of Code.org's online workspace. There will be videos pointing out the basic functionality of the workspace including the `Run`, `Reset`, and `Step` buttons. Also discussed in these videos: dragging Blockly blocks, deleting Blockly blocks, and connecting Blockly blocks. Next, students will practice their _sequencing_ and _debugging_ skills in the maze.
Debugging is an essential element of learning to program. Students will encounter some puzzles that have been solved incorrectly. They will need to step through the existing code to identify errors, including incorrect loops, missing blocks, extra blocks, and blocks that are out of order.

Watch student faces light up as they make their own gorgeous designs using a small number of blocks and digital stickers! This lesson builds on the understanding of loops from previous lessons and gives students a chance to be truly creative. This activity is fantastic for producing artifacts for portfolios or parent/teacher conferences.

This lesson was originally created for the Hour of Code, alongside the Minecraft team. Students will get the chance to practice ideas that they have learned up to this point, as well as getting a sneak peek at conditionals!

This lesson introduces students to `while` loops and `if / else` statements. _While loops_ are loops that continue to repeat commands as long as a condition is true. While loops are used when the programmer doesn't know the exact number of times the commands need to be repeated, but the programmer does know what condition needs to be true in order for the loop to continue looping. `If / Else` statements offer flexibility in programming by running entire sections of code only if something is true, otherwise it runs something else.

In this lesson, students will play a game intended to get them thinking about the way commands need to be given to produce the right result. This will help them more easily carry over to Sprite Lab in the upcoming lessons.

In this lesson, students will learn about the two concepts at the heart of Sprite Lab: sprites and behaviors. Sprites are characters or objects on the screen that students can move, change, and manipulate. Behaviors are actions that sprites will take continuously until they are stopped.

This lesson features Sprite Lab, a platform where students can create their own interactive animations and games. In addition to behaviors, today students will incorporate user input as events to create an "alien dance party".

Developed by Common Sense Education, this lesson is about the difference between information that is safe to share online and information that is not.

As students visit sites that request information about their identities, they learn to adopt a critical inquiry process that empowers them to protect themselves and their families from identity theft. In this lesson, students learn to think critically about the user information that some websites request or require. They learn the difference between private information and personal information, as well as how to distinguish what is safe or unsafe to share online.

By creating an interactive poster with SpriteLab, students will apply their understanding of sharing personal and private information on the web.

By running a simple simulation in Sprite Lab, students will experience how computing can be used to collect data that identify trends or patterns. After running the simulation multiple times, students will have an opportunity to make a prediction about how changing a variable in the simulation might impact the outcome, and then test that hypothesis.

We know that loops allow us to do things over and over again, but now we’re going to learn how to use loops that have extra structures built right in. These new structures will allow students to create code that is more powerful and dynamic.

Featuring Bee, this lesson focuses on `for` loops and using an incrementing variable to solve more complicated puzzles. Students will begin by reviewing loops from previous lessons, then they'll walk through an introduction to `for` loops so they can more effectively solve complicated problems.

In this lesson, students continue to practice `for` loops, but this time with Artist. Students will complete puzzles combining the ideas of variables, loops, and `for` loops to create complex designs. At the end, they will have a chance to create their own art in a freeplay level.

Even though many people use the internet daily, not very many know how it works. In this lesson, students will pretend to flow through the internet, all the while learning about connections, URLs, IP Addresses, and the DNS.