Have students simulate programming in Scratch in a pair activity where one student is the Controller and the other is the Code.
Have students design a game of Asteroid in Java to introduce developing an object and class hierarchy.
Have students implement the dice game Flip in Java to introduce unit testing and to give students practice using loops and data structures.
Have students design a simple game using classes in Python so they realize that even beginners are capable of writing interesting programs.
Have students analyze geographic data and election return data by making a graph of “Purple America” in Java so that they can develop the tools to visualize their own data through coding.
Have students implement a seam carving program in Java to give them experience with dynamic programming, and with manipulating 2D and 3D arrays.
Have students develop a Java program that plots pictures in a 2D grid to practice 2D array processing with a focus on nested loops.
Have students write methods that perform tasks of a standard music player in Java to give them practice manipulating data structures in a familiar context.
Have students implement a simple GeoLocation class in Java that finds the distance between two locations using the Google Maps API to give students an interesting introduction to object-oriented programming.