Creature Lab: Program a Creature's Brain
A fish turns and dashes for every pellet a student drops. Students open its brain and find three rules, each a sense and an action, run top to bottom many times a second. They change what it can sense, add a rule that makes it stop when it is full, and find that the same rule does nothing at the top of the list and everything at the bottom. By the end, they can read the rules as if statements in code and predict what a creature will do before they test it.
At a glance
Essential question
How does a creature decide what to do next?
Objectives
Students will be able to:
- read a rule as a sense (a condition) and an action, and say when it runs
- predict how changing a sense changes a creature's behavior, then test it
- explain why the order of the rules matters, using a rule that works at the bottom of the list but not at the top
- write rules for a new behavior and read them as if statements in code
Vocabulary
sense, condition, action, rule, order, if statement
Standards
1B-AP-10, 1B-AP-15, 2-AP-17
Time and materials
45 minutes, grades 5-8.
- One computer or Chromebook per student or pair, with a mouse or trackpad
- A projector
- The worksheet and exit ticket, one copy each per student
- The rubric, one copy per student if you grade the worksheet
Prep
Make copies of the worksheet and exit ticket. Before class, open mytekdev.com/try/creaturelab?lesson=program-a-creatures-brain&ref=tpt-creaturelab-2 once on a student computer, click the water near the fish to drop food, and watch it go for the food, to check that your school's filter allows the app. No account is needed.
Assessment
- Formative: the questions under What to look for, asked while students work, and the exit ticket (answer key included).
- Summative: the student's two behaviors and the worksheet, scored with the rubric out of 12.
Technology and privacy
Runs in any browser, Chromebooks included, with nothing to install. Students need no account and no email: the link works signed out, and nothing they make is stored on our server unless they choose to save it to an account. If your school blocks new sites, ask IT to allow mytekdev.com.
What’s included
- A one-page overview: objectives, essential question, vocabulary, standards and assessment
- A fifteen-minute walkthrough to rehearse before class, and background in plain words for the teacher
- A 45-minute lesson sequence: warm-up, direct instruction, guided practice, independent practice, closure
- Slides for the board: a PowerPoint file that also opens in Google Slides
- A student worksheet with a QR code
- A 3-question exit ticket, two to a page, with an answer key
- A rubric: 3 criteria, 4 levels, scored out of 12
- Differentiation for English learners, students with IEPs or 504 plans, and students who need more support or more challenge
- Cross-curricular extensions, and notes for teaching it in grades 3-4 and 9-12
- Standards: CSTA 2017
Standards
These CSTA 2017 standards describe programs built from conditionals, tested and debugged. Students read and write rules that are conditionals, and find that their order changes what the program does.
| Framework | Code | Grades | Standard | How the lesson meets it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CSTA 2017 | 1B-AP-10 | 3-5 | Create programs that include sequences, events, loops, and conditionals. | Students write rules, each a conditional, that run in sequence over and over, and build two new behaviors with them. |
| CSTA 2017 | 1B-AP-15 | 3-5 | Test and debug (identify and fix errors) a program or algorithm to ensure it runs as intended. | Students test the full rule at the top and the bottom of the list and fix its place so the creature behaves as intended. |
| CSTA 2017 | 2-AP-17 | 6-8 | Systematically test and refine programs using a range of test cases. | Students test each change with a written prediction, and test the full rule at the top and at the bottom of the list. |
Checked October 2026 against: CSTA 2017 progression chart, CSTA 2017 to 2026 crosswalk.