Welcome to our fun lesson on coding! Today, we’re going to learn about something called “if statements.” These are special commands in coding that only run when a certain condition is true. It’s just like when you say, “If it’s raining, I’ll bring an umbrella.” You only bring the umbrella if it’s actually raining, right?
In coding, an if statement looks like this: if <condition>. If the condition is true, the computer will do the actions that are listed right after the if statement. If the condition is not true, the computer skips those actions and moves on to the next part of the code.
For example, let’s say our condition is “near pile.” If this condition is true, the computer will do the actions that follow. If it’s not true, the computer will skip those actions and go to the next part of the code.
Imagine we have a monkey, a goat, and a banana. We want to use an if statement to decide what they should do. If the banana is frozen, we want the goat to go to the banana and hit it. The monkey might say “yum,” or it might just go to the banana.
So, if the banana is frozen, the goat will do its actions. If the banana isn’t frozen, we’ll skip to the part where the monkey goes to the banana. This way, our program works whether the banana is frozen or not!
When we run the program, if the banana isn’t frozen, the computer will skip the goat’s actions and go straight to the monkey going to the banana.
Let’s look at another example with several bananas. Some are frozen, and some aren’t. The goat needs to decide if it should go to a banana because it’s frozen. The monkey can just go to the bananas directly.
We use a loop to check each banana one by one. If a banana is frozen, the goat will go to it and hit it, and then the monkey will go to it too. If the banana isn’t frozen, the goat skips its actions, and the monkey goes straight to the banana.
When we run this, the goat knows when to hit a frozen banana, and the monkey goes to each banana. If a banana isn’t frozen, the monkey just goes to it directly.
Now it’s your turn to try using if statements in your own coding projects. Have fun and good luck!
Imagine you’re the goat and the monkey. Create a simple game where you decide what to do based on whether a banana is frozen or not. Use paper cutouts to represent the goat, monkey, and bananas. If the banana is frozen, move the goat to it first. If not, move the monkey directly to the banana. This will help you understand how if statements work in a fun way!
Write a short story where characters make decisions based on conditions. For example, “If it’s sunny, the character goes to the park. If it’s raining, they stay inside.” Share your story with the class and discuss how these decisions are like if statements in coding.
Set up a relay race with different stations. At each station, you’ll have a condition to check, like “If the card is red, do 5 jumping jacks.” Move to the next station based on the condition. This activity will help you practice thinking in terms of conditions and actions.
Use Scratch to create a simple program with if statements. For example, make a sprite say “Hello” if you press the space bar. Experiment with different conditions and see how your program changes. This will give you hands-on experience with coding!
Create a scavenger hunt where each clue depends on a condition. For example, “If the next clue is under something blue, go to the blue chair.” This will help you understand how conditions guide actions, just like in coding.
Sure! Here’s a sanitized version of the transcript:
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[Music] Welcome to “If It Snows.” Let’s learn about if statements, which run commands only if a condition is met. It’s very similar to how you normally use “if.” For example, you might say, “If it’s raining, I’ll bring an umbrella.”
Here’s how you write the if statement: `if `. If the condition is met (meaning it’s true), the indented commands will run. If the condition is not true or not met, we skip all the indented commands and run the first command outside of the if statement.
For example, if “near pile” is the condition, and that condition is true, we will execute the commands. If the condition is not true, when the computer reaches the if statement, it will skip to the line outside of it.
Let’s look at a challenge. We have a scenario with a monkey, a goat, and a banana. In the if statement, if the banana is frozen, we want the goat to go to the banana and hit it. The monkey could say “yum,” but it could also just go to the banana.
So, if the banana is frozen, we want the goat to perform these actions. If the banana is not frozen, we should just skip to the command for the monkey to go to the banana. This program will be successful whether the banana is frozen or not.
Let’s go ahead and run it. We skipped straight to the command for the monkey to go to the banana because the banana was not frozen.
Now, let’s look at another example. Here, we have some bananas that are frozen and some that aren’t. The goat needs to decide whether it needs to go to a banana because it’s frozen or if it doesn’t need to go. The monkey could just go directly to the bananas.
We have code that goes through a for loop, working on one banana at a time. If the given banana is frozen, we want the goat to go to that banana and hit it, and then we want the monkey to go to the banana as well.
The great thing about this is that if the banana is not frozen, it will skip to the command for the monkey to go to the banana. But if the banana is frozen, the goat will go to it, hit it, and then the monkey will still go to it.
Let’s see how this works. The goat knows it needs to hit it, and then the monkey goes to it. In the last case, the monkey can just directly go to it.
Now it’s your turn to use if statements. Good luck!
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This version maintains the educational content while removing any informal language and ensuring clarity.
Coding – The process of writing instructions for a computer to follow. – Example sentence: “We learned the basics of coding by creating a simple game in class today.”
If – A command used in coding to make decisions based on conditions. – Example sentence: “In our program, we used an if statement to check if the player had enough points to win.”
Statements – Instructions written in a programming language that tell the computer what to do. – Example sentence: “We wrote several statements to make the character move across the screen.”
Computer – An electronic device that processes data and performs tasks according to instructions. – Example sentence: “Our computer can run many different programs, including games and educational software.”
Actions – Commands that tell the computer to perform specific tasks. – Example sentence: “The game character performs different actions like jumping and running based on the player’s input.”
Banana – A variable name often used in coding examples to represent data. – Example sentence: “In our coding exercise, we used ‘banana’ as a variable to store the player’s score.”
Frozen – A state where a computer program stops responding to inputs. – Example sentence: “We had to restart the computer because the program was frozen and wouldn’t close.”
Goat – A fun variable name sometimes used in coding to represent an object or character. – Example sentence: “In our animation project, we created a goat that could jump over obstacles.”
Monkey – A playful variable name used in coding to represent a character or object. – Example sentence: “The monkey in our game collects bananas to earn points.”
Loop – A sequence of instructions that repeats until a certain condition is met. – Example sentence: “We used a loop to make the character keep moving until it reached the finish line.”
