Stacks - Java

1. Start reading Yertle the Turtle ¡V while reading emphasize the word stack when you hear it
2. When you are finished talk about why the stack of turtles fell over the first one in Mac left and the stack fell apart when the order of removing something didn¡¦t follow.
3. Pull out books/papers and stack then up ask which one do you remove first second etc until the stack is gone.
4. Take out the Lego blocks ¡V different colors and put them onto the Lego board- Make a big deal out of ¡§pushing¡¨ them onto each other .
5. Talk about you can only remove one block at a time and you want the red block how are we going to get it? What happens when the block comes off what sound does it make¡¨pop¡¨
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 a few times.
7. Add numbers to the Lego blocks then repeat steps 4 and 5 but with the numbers talking about order.
8. Talk to students about the Stack data structure in Java .
9. On the whiteboard create a Stack data structure and push and pop items on the stack.
10. Ask them to draw the stack every instruction.
11. Repeat step 9 and 10 until class is comfortable with the stack.
12. Hand out the worksheet on stacks.
Closure
Have the students create a program using stacks.-
a. maze program
b. postfix/prefix notation
c. checking number of braces, quotes Include closure activity (include dialog and possible questions).

Discuss the advantages to using stacks vs other data structures
Evaluation

Rubric:
Correctness 50 points
Stack Usage 20 points
Readability/organization 20 points
Algorithm 10 points