I have been surprised with the difficulty my students are having completing the first project (see previous post). I felt that I virtually gave them the code. However, trouble persist. Very telling, I think. I will be sure to scaffold my projects more in the future. I am coming to see scaffolding as imperative despite the friendliness of Snap! I have to be more sensitive to their lack of experience and moderate level of motivation.
In the meantime, I plan to lead students in stages to create a Snap! project that will solve kinematics problems. I am guessing they will value the script when it comes time to solve kinematics problems. They will have my blessing to use their script to determine the correct answer, but they must provide me the handwritten calculations. To make the project, students will have to apply algebra to generate a matrix of equations to be used in the Snap! project. That has a lot of value in my opinion. Ninth-graders are generally loathe to isolate the desired variable in a kinematic equation before solving. This assignment will force them to do so formally. I hope the practice will help their problem-solving methods later in the unit.
Here is my teacher version of the project. Another purpose this assignment will serve is to keep students somewhat immersed in Snap! programming, which is vital for building student skills.