OVERVIEW

Activity Overview:

Solve a puzzle to find a way for a knight to visit every square on a board exactly once. Once solved, lead students through the power of using abstraction to make the problem easier.

Meta description

• Subject Area: Computer Science, Mathematics
• Grade Level : 6-8
• Computer Science Domains:
  • Data Analysis
  • Algorithms and Programming
• Computer Science Principles:
  • Collaborating Around Computing
  • Recognizing and Defining Computational Problems
  • Developing and Using Abstractions
  • Communicating About Computing
• Materials:
  • Website, www.cs4fn.org
• Considerations:
  • No.

Lesson Plan

Overview

Solve a puzzle to find a way for a knight to visit every square on a board exactly once. Once solved, lead students through the power of using abstraction to make the problem easier.

ASSESSMENT PRE/POST-TEST

How can you use a graph to solve a puzzle? How can you use an algorithm to solve a puzzle?

OBJECTIVES

1. solve the Knight’s Tour puzzle
2. Generalize two puzzles
3. represent the solution on a graph (learn how the puzzles are finite state machines)
4. create and use an algorithm that can be used to solve this puzzle and others similar to it.

CATCH/HOOK

The hook is that it’s a puzzle but will help them to solve other puzzles.

ACTIVITY INSTRUCTIONS

1. Solve a simple puzzle
2. Solve a puzzle that is a bit more challenging
3. Generalize the two puzzles
4. Represent the puzzle as a graph
5. Learn an easier way to solve the puzzle
6. Spot the similarities
7. Create an algorithm that can be used to solve the puzzles

Supplements

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REVIEW

This lesson demonstrated how to solve a difficult puzzle by solving a similar but easier puzzle first. From there it moved onto using the knowledge gained to write an algorithm that can be used to solve similar types of puzzles.

STANDARDS