Y4  - Repetition in shapes

Lesson Focus

Digital Skills & Computing Focus

Key vocabulary
Program, Turtle, Programmed Commands, Code Snippet, Algorithm, Design, Debug, Logo ,Pattern, repeat, repetition, count-controlled loop, valuetrace, Decompose, Move, Turn, degrees, angle, steps, pen

Year 4 will create programs by planning, modifying, and testing commands to create shapes and patterns. They will used "Logo", a text-based programming language. This is the first of the two programming units in Year 4, and looks at repetition and loops within programming.

Lesson will introduce pupils to programming in Logo. Logo is a text-based programming language where pupils type commands that are then drawn on screen. Pupils will learn the basic Logo commands, and will use their knowledge of them to read, write and debug code. 

Children will create algorithms (a precise set of ordered instructions, which can be turned into code) for their initials. They will then implement these algorithms by writing them in Logo commands to draw the letter. Children will move onto creating much more complex shapes based on lines and angles. They will use and understand the “repeat” command to shorten and simplify their code.

Children finally recreate the lesson in  Scratch, they compare the differences in code and create much more complex shapes and patterns.

📸Photographic Summary📸

👩‍💻IN THe BEGINNING - Moving The Line👩‍💻

Y3 WEB In the beginning.

This lesson will introduce pupils to programming in Logo. Logo is a text-based programming language where pupils type commands that are then drawn on screen.  At first children was a little unsure of the different commands to use,  but text-based programming language to learn and they soon got the hand of it. 

Pupils will learn the basic Logo commands, and will use their knowledge of them to read and write code.  They spent sometime debugging Logo code and copied the results on to their worksheets as a record.  

📝Mapping a letter📝

In this lesson, pupils will create algorithms (a precise set of ordered instructions, which can be turned into code) for numbers and their initials. They will then implement these algorithms by writing them in Logo commands to draw the letter. They will debug their code by finding and fixing any errors that they spot. 

They spent sometime debugging Logo commands before creating a algorithm to draw out the initial of their first name.  Children then copied their code onto a worksheet as a record.

🔁Repeat, repeat🔁

Y3 WEB Rep Shapes REPEAT

Children realised that many of the commands entered was nothing more then one repeat after another. It is fortunate that, Logo Academy has a built in REPEAT command that can greatly reduce the amount of code required to draw shapes on the work area.

We looked at recognising repeats and how they can help to simplify coding. They had already used repeats and loops in Scratch, but coding them in text based programming required some accuracy.

😻Rewrite in Scratch😻

Children had worked out that if you divide 360 by the number of side of a shape the result is the angle of each turn. For example for a triangle: 360/3 = 120. So that is three sides each one of 120 degrees. 

With that children moved onto Scratch which allowed them much more control of the lines and colour. 

Scratch also gave them an opportunity to create much more complex shapes and to write a program that could draw several shapes by simply selecting a letter on the keyboard. See below for share Scratch Code

 📝Our Worksheets📝

Web Rep in Shapes Work

Scratch Code 

This code was created by one of our students, Kenji in Year 4 and your class is welcome to make use of it. You can modify the program is a number of different ways and will draw most common shapes by pressing letters A to F.  It's easily modified.