Intro to Programming with Karel the Dog (Español)

Students are introduced to CodeHS and how Karel the Dog can be given a set of instructions to perform a simple task.

Students will learn about Karel’s ‘World’ and the ways that Karel can interact with it.

Karel can learn new words or commands through the use of functions. This is called defining a functions. Defining functions has syntax rules.

When was the first computer made? What did it look like, and what was it used for? In this lesson, students will learn about the creation and evolution of computing machines that now permeate our day-to-day life.

Functions are used to teach Karel a word or command. Using functions allow us to break down our program into smaller pieces and make it easier to understand.

Functions are used to teach Karel a word or command. Using functions allow us to break down our program into smaller pieces and make it easier to understand.

All programs start by ?calling? the start function.

Top down design and Decomposition are the processes of breaking down a program into functions into smaller parts to avoid repeated code and make our program more readable.

Comments give notes to the reader to explain what your code is doing. Two types of comments that can utilized are preconditions and postconditions. Preconditions are assumptions we make about what is true before a function is called in our program. Postconditions are what should be true after a function is called in our program.

Introducing Super Karel! Since commands like turnRight() and turnAround() are so commonly used, we shouldn’t have to define them in every single program. They should come prepackaged with the Karel library. This is where SuperKarel comes in. SuperKarel is just like Karel, except SuperKarel already knows how to turnRight and turnAround, so we don’t have to define those methods ourselves anymore.

This lesson teaches students how to use for loops in their programs. The for loop allows you to repeat a specific part of code a fixed number of times.

We write for loops like this:

for(var i = 0; i < 4; i++)
{
    // Code to be repeated 4 times
}

This lesson gives students more practice creating and debugging for loops. The for loop allows you to repeat a specific part of code a fixed number of times.

• A condition is a function that returns a true/false answer.
• JavaScript uses if statements as a way to make decisions and execute specific code. If statements are helpful in writing code that can be used in different situations.

If and if/else statements allow Karel to handle different types of worlds and allow us to solve more general problems.

While loops allow us to repeat a section of code as long some condition is true.

Control structures (like loops and if statements) are useful in building programs that can be applied in various Karel worlds. This lesson is designed to test students? knowledge of control structures in preparation for the upcoming Karel challenges.

Indentation is especially important when using multiple loops, functions, and if statements to show the structure of the code. The indentation gives you a good visual way to see what commands are inside vs. outside of a loop or if statement.