Beyond Basics with Python

In the first lesson of this course, students review some fundamental programming concepts such as conditional statements, user input, combining variables with strings, and how to generate random numbers. This review lesson should help the students reorient themselves after the break between courses while also challenging them to build a fun Band Name Generator app.

In this lesson, students revisit the fundamental arithmetic operators in Python and learn about how to use Python’s “float” data type. The “Geometry Assistant” app they build implements basic formulas for the geometry of squares and circles. After completing it, students can use Python to help them with their math homework!

In this lesson, students learn how to use complex conditional statements. Games often require complex conditional logic, so we’ll implement the hand game “Odds and Evens” to practice working with complex conditional statements. 

In this lesson, students work with functions and create a “Temperature Converter” app to practice working with them. They’ll practice defining functions, passing values to functions through parameters, and returning values from functions. 

In this lesson, students learn how to work with indefinite loops (loops that run an indeterminate number of times) using Python’s “while” loop. These kinds of loops are widespread in games, so this lesson focuses on creating a simple “Coin Toss” game that will loop until the user guesses the coin face incorrectly.

In this lesson, students begin implementing a dice game called “Fifty To Win” as part 1 of their 2-part midterm project. The midterm project reviews concepts the students have learned throughout this course such as creating functions, indefinite looping, getting user input, working with random numbers, basic arithmetic operators, conditional statements, and more.

In this lesson, students finish the midterm project, a dice game called “Fifty To Win.” The lesson focuses on refactoring their work from the previous lesson using the D.R.Y. (Don’t Repeat Yourself) programming principle to move repetitive code into functions.

In this lesson, students learn how to create and manipulate Python’s “list” data structure. Topics include creating lists, adding items to lists, removing items from lists, and testing if an item is in a list.

In this lesson, students learn how to create definite loops using Python’s “for” loop. Students have worked with Python’s “while” loop for a few lessons, and the addition of the “for” loop means they have all of Python’s looping toolkit at their disposal.

In this lesson, students learn about another fundamental Python data structure, the dictionary (dict). The students build an app that lets users rate movies to practice working with dictionaries.

In this lesson, students begin part one of a two-part Rock, Paper, Scissors app. They’ll review and use lists, loops, user input, function definitions, conditional statements, and importing functions from Python modules.

In the final lesson of this course, students finish the Rock, Paper, Scissors app we began in the previous class. We review how to work with Python’s “dict” data structure, f-strings, multi-line strings, and functions.  After finishing this lesson, students have an impressive text-based Python app and the skills to build similar projects independently.