I'm working with girl coder on new drills based on Phaser and JavaScript. In each lesson, I sit by coder girl and watch her type in the same drill 10 times.
The philosophy for Phaser Girl is to take the simplest possible code snippet and build from there. Programming concepts are not explained until after the drills are started. The idea is to dive in, start typing, and the concepts will arise over time.
This structure came from watching my son learn karate. Since his dojo (classroom) was 25 minutes away, I would often stay in the dojo and watch the class.
There are three components to teach kids karate:
- kihon (fundamental: punch, kick, block)
- kata (form: collection of kihon)
- kumite (sparring: application of kihon and kata)
For Phaser Girl, the equivalent is:
- syntax: conditionals, loops, variable assignment
- drills: the basis of Phaser Girl
- projects
Within this framework, I focus on drills. The syntax emerges from the drills.
By drill 6, Cursors, each rep was taking 5 minutes, pushing the total lesson time to 70 minutes. I gave coder girl a 5 minute break after rep 5.
Repetition
I originally started with a target of 5 reps. During the first lesson, Blank Screen, I increased the target repetition to 10. The objective is for coder girl to be able to go through the drill without looking at reference material and without encountering a syntax error by rep 8.By drill 6, Cursors, each rep was taking 5 minutes, pushing the total lesson time to 70 minutes. I gave coder girl a 5 minute break after rep 5.
Practical Application (kumite) Example
Level 1, simple project. 40 lines of code total.
