🎯 Learning Objectives
After this lesson you should be able to:
- Write programs that display messages, receive keyboard input, and use simple arithmetic expressions in assignment statements
- Use selection (if-elif-else statements) to control the flow of program execution
- Locate and correct common syntax errors
- Create lists and access individual list items
💬 Key Vocabulary
- Input
- Output
- Variables
- Assignment
- Expressions
- Selection
- Boolean/logical expression (condition)
- List
- Index
- List item
Introduction
In this lesson, you will:
- Brush up on your Python skills
- You will walk through or write programs that display messages, receive keyboard input, and use arithmetic expressions in assignment statements
- Use selection (if–elif–else statements) to control the flow of program execution
- Create lists and access their items
In previous years, you…
- used a text-based programming language (Python) to create programs that involved:
- variables, operators and expressions
- sequence, selection, and iteration
In this unit, you will…
- use Python to develop programs that also involve:
- lists
- strings
📝 Starter Activity
- Let’s see how much Python you remember from Year 7 & 8. Create a new folder in your Year 9 folder called Advanced Python.
- Download the Word document below into the folder by right clicking and “Save link as…”, then fill out the answers before we go through them as a class.
📝 Activity 1 – Selection Recap
- You will be using pair programming, with each member in a pair taking on a specific role:
- Driver: Controls the keyboard and mouse
- Navigator: Provides support and instructions
- You will alternate between roles.
- For this activity you need a selection structure (if-elif-else) when there are multiple branches and your program needs to select which one of them to follow.
- Let’s extend this program together, to check the day and display whether it’s a weekday on not.
- Note: The program uses an integer for each day of the week, ranging from 0 for Monday to 6 for Sunday.
📝 Activity 2 – How Long Till the Weekend
- Download the Activity 2 worksheet and use the Python window below to extend your current program even further.
📖 Activity 3 – A List of Names
- The names for the days of the week can be stored in a list .
- Syntax: A comma-separated list of values (items), in square brackets.
- In this example, the list items are strings (i.e. pieces of text), so they need to be in quotation marks.
- A list is a kind of data structure.
- Data structures are organised collections of data.
- In the case of lists, data is organised in a sequence, with each item having a unique index, denoting its position in the list.
- When the program is executed, this is what the list will look like in memory.
- Each item has a unique index, denoting its position in the list. You can see the index of each item on the left from 0 to 6.
📝 Activity 4 – As Seasons Roll on By
- Download the Activity 4 worksheet and use the Python windows below to complete the programs on the worksheet.
Task 1
Task 2
Task 3
💬 Summary
In this lesson, you…
- Brushed up on your Python skills
- Used selection (if-elif-else statements) to control the flow of program execution
- Created lists and accessed their items
In the next lesson, you will…
- Perform operations on lists
🏅 Badge it
🥈 Silver Badge
- Upload your completed Activity 2 worksheet to the Silver badge task on Bourne to Learn.
🥇 Gold Badge
- Upload your completed Activity 4 worksheet to the Gold badge task on Bourne to Learn.
🥉 Platinum Badge
- Upload your completed Activity 4 worksheet to the Platinum badge task on Bourne to Learn as well as the Explorer task.