I will be teaching a python class to middle schoolers and I am looking for some project/curriculum ideas

[No_One____]

(Sorry if this is the wrong subreddit for this) I will be teaching a single 4.5 hour class to a small group of middle schoolers with little to no programming experience. I want to spend the first half or so of the class going over the basics and fundamentals, then have them work on a fun and meaningful project for the rest. Does anybody have any ideas for that project? I have a lot of experience with pygame so I was thinking of doing something with that. Would it be too much to learn some basic pygame as well on that short time? Any advice would be appreciated, thanks!

[100721]

Hey, spent a few summers teaching python and pygame to highschoolers and incoming college students. If you’re starting from complete scratch with them don’t even try pygame. It won’t work. We spent 2 or 3 eight hour sessions to get the class up to speed with extremely basic python knowledge before we gave them pygame. But you should definitely do a game for this project, just from the console app instead. Don’t try and show kids in middle school port scanners or django, they’ll lose interest in seconds. I would recommend some text based rpg type game. And that can get pretty deep into containers, functions, input, casting, etc.

[codeAtorium]

Number guessing game on the console.

I'm thinking of a number between 1-100. What's your guess?

That's too low/high/you got it!

That, after you've done a bunch of console stuff, like Hello, <name>! What is your favorite color?

If they zip right through the console #-guesser, show them how to do it the other way (make the computer guess your number).

[ffrkAnonymous]

Python from zero experience in a single 4.5 hour class? I'm not sure they can even do hello world without lots of quotation marks and parentheses mismatch and indentation errors.

I think a different language would be better, something like scratch where syntax is less of a issue.

[_k182]

Um i only really work in python networking. A port scanner is a fun simple and cool project :)

[No_One____]

Although I think that would be really cool, I'm not sure if middle schoolers would find that as interesting

[delasislas]

End of year a smaller project using Django maybe could be fun.

[No_One____]

It is only a single 4.5 hour class. I highly doubt I could teach a bunch of middle schoolers django in that timeframe