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Week 1 — Challenge Card

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🍕 Chase the Pizza — Level Up

Finished the tutorial? Don't stop. Pick one.

🟢 Starter

  • Change your character to a different sprite
  • Make the pizza a different food
  • Change the background
  • Make your character move faster
  • Change the score so each pizza is worth 5 points instead of 1

🟡 Builder

  • Add a countdown timer so the game ends after 30 seconds
  • Add a second food that's worth more points
  • Add a sound when you score
  • Make the pizza appear in a random spot every time
  • Add a food that makes you lose points

🔴 Extender

  • Switch the editor from Blocks to JavaScript (dropdown at the top)
  • Find the line that controls your speed. Change it in code, not blocks
  • Add a second player on the same keyboard
  • Make the game get faster the longer you survive
  • Explain to your partner what a sprite actually is

Stuck? Good. Ask your partner first, then me.

Teacher notes

Print 4–6 copies and leave them on the tables. Students self-select. Do not assign tiers out loud — the grades below are for you, not for them.

The Blocks → JavaScript toggle is the most important item on this card. It is the mechanism that lets a 5th grader and a 10th grader work on the identical project without either one feeling babied or lost. Point it out to your fast finishers explicitly; most won't discover it on their own.

If everyone is flying through it: ask the whole room, "Can you make the game impossible to lose?" then "Now can you make it impossible to win?" Making something deliberately broken requires understanding it better than making it work.

If most students are struggling: stop the class, put the tutorial on the projector, and do the next two steps together. Losing four minutes of build time is much cheaper than losing half the room.