TKP Tips: Teaching the SmallBasic SPIDER WEB recipe

The parts of the SPIDER WEB recipe are as follows:

1) Recipe – guided line-by-line translation, to teach core concepts. For SPIDER WEB, you are building on what the kids learned in all of the previous drawing recipes (core IDE and language concepts such as objects, methods, etc…) and For loops.  In this recipe we work on mastering the idea of variables and also that of subroutines.  Also we include ColorWheel API.  The cheat sheet for the core recipe is WJJ750. Below is the teacher video for the core recipe.

2) Variation – instructor – led verbal refactoring and modifications to add concepts to the solution. In this variation we encourage you to lead the students in self-directed variation.  That is, the instructor should draw a grid on the whiteboard, ask the pairs to list the properties of the figure, i.e. shape, color, etc… and to guide the pairs to make increasingly more complex modifications, such as solid color to random color lines, solid color background to complex background images, etc…

3) Recap – presented by the instructors, re-do the recipe to reinforce core concepts. You’ll want to particularly emphasize common mistakes with the subroutines syntax.

4) Quiz – There is no quiz for this recipe at this time.

5) Homework – There is no homework for this recipe at this time.

6) Xtras – The KNOTTED RING recipe  (recipe found at KnotRing and cheat sheet found at VQJ995) can be used as a variation or another recipe, to reinforce the programming concepts taught in SPIDER WEB.  We also have a ‘how-to-teach’ video for KNOTTED RING.

We are really excited about the growth of TKP.  We welcome feedback on the how we can make these videos better for you as TKP teachers.

Happy teaching!