Agent Guided Book Tour CS, ELA

Student Activities

Project description:

Your challenge is to pick the 3-4 most pivotal scenes from your book. Consider if you were giving a summary of the most defining moments in the life of the main character(s). You will need to decide what "theme" or "Lesson" readers should glean from his/her story, show that theme in every scene. Each scene should have obvious connections back to at least 2 quotes from that section of the book. The page numbers should be cited on boards, or in NPC descriptions.

You will also code an agent as the tour guide of your world. The goal of your agent is to help teach the lesson the reader should learn from Billy-Joe's story and to point out important artifacts in each scene. Think of you agent like a museum tour guide.

The planning pages will walk you through the prep and preparing for creating this project. You will need a scene blue print and planning for the world and planning for code. Remember the importance of planning for your code before you write a program. You may need to practice with the code builder if it is newer to you.  All of these components that you type will need to be documented in a final SWAY.

A big goal of this project is to practice going back to the text for detail. The more details from the text in every component the better. We are also looking for every object added to be purposeful!

(Quick version of project flow)

1.  Comparing writing and programming page- Intro and reading article on the topic-Titled “Just in time documentation” by James Hood.
2.  Review of theme with students and then intro project. Explain how each scene should be a pivotal moment in the book related to their selected theme.
3. Look over Design Planning page with students, you may adapt this to fit what your students are familiar with when planning. Emphasize how each quote and idea should support the build and design in Minecraft. Give students time to work on planning, keeping in mind the agent will be the guide to explain their connections and be the tour guide.
4. If coding with agent is new to students, you will need to plan a lesson to introduce code connection. If familiar review the terms loop and conditionals as you go over the planning page. Focus on how to simplify the code and also make connections back to why we plan scripts when we code.
5. Remind students that all components of project will be moved into a final Sway for presentation and turn in.
6. When students have planning pages approved, they can begin the build.
7. I usually have students present Sway and share world to grade.