-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 1
Teaching FAQ
Questions teachers actually ask about Geometry Playground, answered as directly as possible. Organised by topic.
If your question isn't here, check Troubleshooting for technical issues or Classroom Management for day-to-day operations.
No. You need to know secondary school geometry. Swift is a vehicle for the geometry, and the curriculum is designed so a maths teacher can read the code and understand what it does even if they've never coded.
If you want a 30-minute head start, do Chapters I and II yourself on an iPad before the first lesson. By the end of Chapter II you'll have seen 90% of the Swift syntax the students will meet across all six chapters.
Yes, with caveats. The curriculum is a geometry curriculum first and a coding curriculum second. You'll teach the coding content comfortably, but you may feel shaky on some of the geometric theorems (parallel line angle properties in Chapter II, the Pythagorean converse in Chapter IV, similarity and scale factor in Chapter V). Read the relevant sections of a Year 9 or Year 10 maths textbook alongside the curriculum and you'll be fine.
Yes, by porting to Python turtle. See the "If you aren't in an Apple environment" section of Classroom Management. The ideas travel cleanly; only the syntax changes.
Probably. See Curriculum Alignment NSW for the NSW Stage 5 mapping and Curriculum Alignment International for Common Core, Cambridge, and Australian Curriculum v9 notes. If your jurisdiction isn't covered, the content maps to any Year 9 to Year 10 geometry course with minor adjustments.
Nothing. The curriculum, the Swift Playgrounds book, the companion website, and the course-ui library are all free. You need iPads (or Macs) that can run Swift Playgrounds, which is the only real cost.
Roughly one term to one semester for a typical Year 9 class, depending on pacing. See Scope and Sequence for three suggested plans.
The chapters are designed to build on each other, but you have some flexibility.
- Chapter I is non-negotiable. It establishes the walking metaphor and the basic drawing primitives. Skip it and nothing else makes sense.
- Chapters II and III can be taught in either order. Variables before loops is slightly more natural, but you can swap them without damage.
- Chapter IV can be skipped if you're short on time and don't mind losing conditionals. Chapters V and VI don't strictly depend on it.
- Chapter V is essential for Chapter VI. Functions are the foundation for composite figures.
- Chapter VI is the capstone. Skipping it is possible but wasteful; it's the chapter that pulls everything together.
Within most chapters, yes. The tutorials (usually sections 1 and sometimes 3) are required, but the drills can be pruned. See each Chapter I teaching notes page for per-chapter advice on what's essential and what's optional.
By a wide margin, Chapter II (Shape Properties with Variables). It's the longest (21 sections), densest, and covers the most geometric theorems. Budget three weeks. Don't rush it.
Chapter VI (Composite Figures) is the most cognitively demanding but has fewer sections. Budget two weeks.
Chapter III (Polygon Patterns with Loops). Nine sections, one big idea (loops save typing), lots of drill-style exercises where students just swap numbers. It's a good breather after Chapter II.
Year 9 (age 13 to 14) is the sweet spot. The geometry matches what they're learning in maths class, and the coding is their first serious programming experience.
Year 8 (age 12 to 13) works for advanced students or dedicated code clubs. The geometry is slightly ahead of their maths class, which is fine and sometimes motivating.
Year 10 (age 14 to 15) works if the students haven't coded before. If they already know Python or Scratch, some of the earlier chapters will feel slow, but Chapters V and VI are still new territory.
Year 7 or younger. Probably too hard. Try Hello World or Everyone Can Code instead.
Year 11 or older. The geometry will be too basic, but the curriculum might still work as a gentle introduction to Swift for students who are scared of "real" programming.
Three reasons:
- Swift Playgrounds is a polished, touch-first editor designed specifically for students on iPad. Nothing else comes close on that form factor.
- Swift is a general-purpose language. Students who enjoy Chapters V and VI can build iOS apps or Server-side services with the same language. That's not true of Scratch.
- The type system catches errors clearly. Swift's error messages, while not perfect, are better than most languages for beginners.
If you're in a non-Apple school, the "why not Python" answer is "nothing, use Python turtle, it's great". See Classroom Management.
Historical baggage. "Turtle graphics" comes from Logo (1967) and is a wonderful idea, but the word "turtle" carries associations with childhood programming that don't serve Year 9 students. "The pen walks" is the same metaphor, described in language that sounds more mature. Students respond better to it.
The underlying mathematics is identical.
This is a big topic. See Assessment Strategies for the full answer. The short version: grade on process, decomposition, and code quality, not on "how pretty is the final picture".
Yes. See Rubrics for a master rubric and per-chapter criteria.
Celebrate it. Then assess it against the same rubric: did they decompose the problem? Did they use the constructs from this chapter correctly? Is the code readable? If yes, it's exemplary work even if it doesn't match the original spec. See Assessment Strategies.
Mostly you can't, and mostly it doesn't matter. Copied code doesn't hurt a student who genuinely reads and understands what they copied; that's called "learning from examples" and it's a legitimate engineering practice. The students who are cheating will reveal themselves on the next exercise when they can't explain their own code. Ask them to read it to you.
If you want formal plagiarism checking, have students complete a brief handwritten reflection at the end of each chapter explaining what they learned. You'll know immediately who was paying attention.
Depends on your school's reporting format. If you need a mark out of 100, use the master rubric in Rubrics and the weighting suggested there. If you need a written comment, focus on the student's growth in decomposition and problem-solving, not on technical Swift skills. The curriculum is a geometry curriculum; that's what you're reporting on.
One per student is ideal. One per pair is workable. Fewer than one per pair is very hard and not recommended.
No. Any iPad that runs the current version of Swift Playgrounds will work. That includes cheap base-model iPads from the last few years.
See the "Managing absences" section of Classroom Management.
Normal and expected. The curriculum is self-paced within a lesson: faster students do more exercises, slower students do fewer. At the end of a chapter, everyone has seen the same material but with different levels of depth. Don't try to force everyone to the same section number at the same time.
Not recommended for the first attempt. The conceptual moments (the variables tutorial, the functions tutorial, the first composite figure) need a teacher present. If you do set homework, set the drill exercises, not the tutorials.
Yes if they have a personal iPad or Mac with Swift Playgrounds installed. Their subscription to the Geometry Playground book persists across devices signed in with the same Apple ID, so a student who subscribes at school can continue at home.
Swift Playgrounds should update subscribed books automatically. If not, see Troubleshooting.
The site adapts to phone screens but is designed for tablet and desktop. On a small phone, some elements stack vertically. Everything is still functional.
Yes. Once subscribed, the book is local on the device. Students can work offline. They'll only need internet to receive updates.
No. The teaching notes pages on this wiki (Chapter I through Chapter VI) are the closest equivalent. They walk through the intent of each section and flag the common misconceptions, which is more useful than a raw answer key.
If you want to see "an answer" for any exercise, the starter code plus a few minutes of experimentation will get you there. Most exercises have many valid answers.
Yes. The Swift Playgrounds book is subscribed, so you can't modify the book itself, but you can:
- Have students add extra pages for variations (see Classroom Management).
- Write your own exercises as separate playgrounds and share them via AirDrop or iCloud.
- Maintain your own companion worksheets with additional questions referencing the exercises.
- Fork the companion website (it's open source on GitHub, see Home) and run your own version.
Yes, please. Open an issue on the GitHub repository or contact the author via the links on Home. Teacher feedback is the single most valuable input to this project.
Because wikis are fast to edit and easy for a single author to maintain. A polished website implies an editorial team. A wiki implies a working document. The curriculum itself is polished (the Swift Playgrounds book and the companion site); the wiki is a place where a teacher can find an answer in under a minute without wading through marketing copy.
Videos age badly (interfaces change, voices sound dated, the author moves on) and they're harder to update than text. Text is also skimmable and searchable, which is what a busy teacher needs.
If you want a video introduction for yourself or your students, the Apple Education website has general Swift Playgrounds videos that cover the interface. The content of Geometry Playground is best learned by doing, not watching.
Because that's where the author teaches. If you're in the USA or another English-speaking country, the spelling differences are minimal ("colour", "metre", "programme") and the context differences are almost nonexistent. Flags in Chapter V include the Union Jack and the US flag alongside many others. Nothing is jurisdictionally locked.
See "Why the walking metaphor instead of turtle graphics?" above. Students understand walking because they walk. They don't understand coordinate planes until you teach them, and coordinate planes are the subject of Chapter I, so using coordinates to teach Chapter I would be circular.
Chapter V reintroduces explicit coordinates (for positioning shapes) once students are ready.
Because six is the natural length of one school term. Fewer feels shallow; more feels like a commitment. Six chapters lets a teacher adopt the curriculum for "one term" without having to think hard about whether they can finish it.
Ongoing polish and maintenance. No current plan for Chapter VII, though a sister project on VEX V5 robotics is in early planning. See Changelog for recent changes.
- Overview for the pitch
- Setup for first-time device setup
- Classroom Management for day-to-day operations
- Assessment Strategies for grading
- Troubleshooting for specific failures
Geometry Playground · a Swift Playgrounds curriculum for high school geometry · dbbudd.github.io · built by Daniel Budd