At the end of the Autumn term twelve Year 6 students took part in a programming enhancement activity with the Boys’ School. The aim was to work together, in pairs, to create a ‘Flappy Bat’ game! The game needed be created so that the chosen character moved across the screen, avoiding the scrolling background (buildings) and had to be animated to look life-like!

The initial task was to decompose the game –  looking at the sample project (without seeing the code) and thinking about all the elements of it that would need to be created and coded. Then, once the character/sprite and background/stage were chosen, the pairs began to write and debug their code. The resulting games were of a fantastic standard and very varied (we even had a flying taco!). The students were challenged and in order to be successful needed to collaborate effectively. The activity afforded many extension possibilities, included adding a scoring system or developing further levels.
 
There was great excitement throughout and much sharing of ideas, a real buzz in the room. It was a really successful event, developing not only their programming skills and attitudes, but also their social and collaborative skills.

We think we can speak for all the girls by saying that we really enjoyed visiting the Boys’ School and working with them. We all taught each other some different code that helped us with our games. We all liked doing the first activity which was figuring out how the game on the whiteboard worked – this is called decomposition. We had to use our knowledge of gravity to help keep our character up in the air so that it did not crash into the scrolling buildings. The programming was challenging but we had fun doing it together.  We had to do a lot of debugging to get our games to work. We found that it was a very fun and educational experience that we hope to do again!