This article discusses how to use murals as an interdisciplinary, cooperative activity to blend science, art, and math concepts.

This lesson plan meets the secondary requirements for The Engish Language Arts Standard Reading: Literature Grades 7-12 with the option of meeting the additional standard of Speaking and Listening. This lesson offers specific details with flexibility for implementation in the classroom. Students can work independently or in groups and be able to create their final book project using technology. 

This lesson plan meets the secondary requirements for The Engish Language Arts Standard Speaking and Listening Standards 4 & 5. This lesson offers specific details with flexibility for implementation in the classroom. Students can choose how they would like to present their information using their choice of multimedia tool. 

To conclude this unit, students design a recommendation engine based on data that they collect and analyze from their classmates. After looking at an example of a recommendation app, students follow a project guide to complete this multi-day activity. In the first several steps, students choose what choice they want to help the user to make, what data they need to give the recommendation, create a survey, and collect information about their classmates' choices. They then interpret the data and use what they have learned to create the recommendation algorithm. Last, they use their algorithms to make recommendations to a few classmates. Students perform a peer review and make any necessary updates to their projects before preparing a presentation to the class.

In this lesson students design a structure to represent their perfect day using the binary representation systems they've learned in this chapter. Students will first write a short description of their perfect day and then review with a partner to identify the key pieces of information they think a computer could capture. As a class students will decide how a punch card of bytes of information will be interpreted to represent those pieces of information. Students will then use the ASCII, binary number, and image formats they have learned to represent their perfect days. Students then trade punch cards and try to decode what the other student's perfect day is like. The lesson ends with a reflection.

In this cumulative project for Chapter 1, students plan for and develop an interactive greeting card using all of the programming techniques they've learned to this point.

Students will plan and build their own game using the project guide from the previous two lessons to guide their project. Working individually or in pairs, students will first decide on the type of game they'd like to build, taking as inspiration a set of sample games. They will then complete a blank project guide where they will describe the game's behavior and scope out the variables, sprites, and functions they'll need to build. In Code Studio, a series of levels prompts them on a general sequence they can use to implement this plan. Partway through the process, students will share their projects for peer review and will incorporate feedback as they finish their game. At the end of the lesson, students will share their completed games with their classmates. This project will span multiple classes and can easily take anywhere from 3-5 class periods.

In this final project for the course, students team to develop and test a prototype for an innovative computing device based on the Circuit Playground. Using the inputs and outputs available on the board, groups will create programs that allow for interesting and unique user interactions.

Students take what they've learned through chapter one, and develop an app of their own design that uses the board to output information.

To conclude their study of the problem solving process and the input/output/store/process model of a computer, students will propose an app designed to solve a real world problem. This project will be completed across multiple days and will result in students creating a poster highlighting the features of their app that they will present to their classmates. A project guide provides step by step instructions for students and helps them organize their thoughts. The project is designed to be completed in pairs though it can be completed individually.

At this point teams have researched a topic of personal and social importance, developed and tested both a paper prototype and a digital prototype, and iterated on the initial app to incorporate new features and bug fixes. Now is the time for them to review what they have done and pull together a coherent presentation to demonstrate their process of creation. Using the provided presentation template, teams prepare to present about their process of app development, including the problem they set out to solve, the ways in which they've incorporated feedback from testing, and their plans for the future.

Based on the peer interview from the previous lesson, each student comes up with an idea for an app that will address their user's problem. Students then get to create their own paper prototype of their app ideas by drawing "screens" on individual notecards. A project guide directs students through the process including building the app and testing it with their user to see if their assumptions about the user interfaces they created are accurate.

Students have spent a lot of time throughout the unit working on their Personal Website. In the final couple of days students finalize their websites. They work with peers to get feedback, put the finishing touches on the websites, review the rubric and reflect on their process. To cap off the unit, they will share their projects and also a overview of the process they took to get to that final design.

After learning about how to link web pages to one another, students are finally able to publish the website they have been working on. In this lesson, they link together all the previous pages they have created into one project, create a new page, and add navigation between the pages before publishing the entire site to the Web.

This lesson is a capstone to the Internet unit. Students will research and prepare a flash talk about an issue facing society: either **[v Net Neutrality]** or **Internet Censorship**. Developing an informed opinion about these issues hinges on an understanding of how the Internet functions as a system. Students will prepare and deliver a flash talk that should combine forming an opinion about the issue and an exhibition of their knowledge of the internet.

This lesson is good *practice* for certain elements of the AP Explore Performance Task.1 The primary things practiced here are: doing a bit of research about impacts of computing (though here it’s specifically about the Internet), explaining some technical details related to ideas in computer science, and connecting these ideas to global and social impacts. Students will practice synthesizing information, and presenting their learning in a flash talk.

1**Note:** This is NOT the official AP® Performance Task that will be submitted as part of the Advanced Placement exam; it is a practice activity intended to prepare students for some portions of their individual performance at a later time.

In this lesson students will conduct a small amount of research to explore a file format either currently in use or from history. Students will conduct research in order to complete a "one-pager" that summarizes their findings. They will also design a computational artifact (video, audio, graphic, etc.) that succinctly summarizes the advantages of their format over other similar ones.

This lesson is intended to be a quick, short version of a performance task in which students rapidly do some research and respond in writing. It might take 2 class days but should not take more. The goal is to develop skills that students will use when they complete the actual Explore PT later in the year.

To conclude their introduction to programming, students will design a program that draws a digital scene of their choosing. Students will be working in groups of 3 or 4 and will begin by identifying a scene they wish to create. They will then use Top-Down Design to identify the high-level functions necessary to create that image. The group will then assign these components to individual members of the group to program. After programming their individual portion, students will combine all of their code to compose the whole scene. The project concludes with reflection questions similar to those students will see on the AP® Performance Tasks.

Note: This is NOT the official AP Performance Task that will be submitted as part of the Advanced Placement exam; it is a practice activity intended to prepare students for some portions of their individual performance at a later time.

AP® is a trademark registered and/or owned by the College Board, which was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse, this curriculum.

Students learn about various types of cybercrimes and the cybersecurity measures that can help prevent them. Then students perform a Rapid Research project investigating a particular cybercrime event with a particular focus on the data that was lost or stolen and the concerns that arise as a result. The Rapid Research activity features vocabulary, concepts, and skills that should help prepare them for the AP Explore PT, and also serves as a capstone for the sequence of lessons on encryption and security.

In this lesson students will conduct a small amount of research to explore a computing innovation that leverages the use of data. Students will research a topic of personal interest and respond to questions about about how that innovation produces, uses, or consumes data. The lesson is intended to give students practice with doing research of this nature and provides a small amount of scaffolding to help students figure out what to look for.

This lesson is intended to be a quick, short version of a performance task in which students rapidly do some research and respond in writing. It might take 2 class days but should not take more. The goal is to generate ideas for exploration later when students complete the actual Explore PT later in the year.

This lesson attempts to walk students through the iterative development process of building an app (basically) from scratch that involves the use of `if` statements. Following an imaginary conversation between two characters - Alexis and Michael - students follow the problem solving and program design decisions they make for each step of constructing the app. Along the way they decide when and how to break things down into functions, and of course discuss the logic necessary to make a simple game.

The last step - writing code that executes an end-of-game condition - students must do on their own. How they decide to use `if` statements to end the game will require some creativity. The suggested condition - first to score 10 points - is subtly tricky and can be written many different ways.

At the conclusion of the lesson there are three practice Create PT-style questions as well as resources explaining the connection between this lesson and the actual Create PT. Depending on how you use these materials they can easily add an additional day to this lesson.