Setting Up Your Block Theme's Development Environment - Lesson Plan

[wparasae]

IMPORTANT:

** This lesson plan belongs to part of a greater course, Create a Custom Block Theme #1 **
Please reach out to @arasae (Sarah Snow) in the #training team Slack if you would like to help with this lesson plan.

Topic Description

Setting Up Your Development Environment To Create a Custom Block Theme; this should provide and explain the development environment someone needs to create a custom block theme. This topic covers text editors, local environments, and may also provide an internal link so people who are learning can just click a magic link and be shown around the text editor without having to install other programs.

Objectives

After completing this lesson, participants will be able to:

• Navigate a text editor and development environment
• Explain each necessary part of a development environment

Guidelines

Review the [team guidelines] (https://make.wordpress.org/training/handbook/guidelines/)

Development Checklist:

• Review any related material on Learn
• Description and Objectives finalized
• Gather links to Support, other learn.wordpress.org existing resources, and Developer Docs
• Create an outline of the example lesson walk-through
• NEED: Set up Development Environment, Write instructions for using text editor in that environment
• Draft lesson plan
• Copy edit
• Style guide review
• Instructional Review
• Final review
• Publish
• Announce to the Training team
• Announce to lesson plan creator
• Announce to marketing
• Gather feedback from lesson plan users about the quality

Repo Structure and Lesson Plan Template

Please remove all blockquote comments such as this before publishing.

Description

A short paragraph explaining what is covered in the lesson plan. This should be text that can be copied and used in a meetup or workshop description.

Target Audience

Who is this lesson intended for? What interests/skills would they bring? Put an "x" in the brackets for all that apply.

• Users / Content Writers
• Designers
• Beginner-Level Developers
• Developers
• Speakers
• Organizers
• Kids

Experience Level

How much experience would a participant need to get the most from this lesson? Put an "x" in the brackets for all that apply.

• Beginner
• Intermediate
• Advanced

Type of Instruction

Which strategies will be used for this lesson plan? Put an "x" in the brackets for all that apply.

• Text-and-Image-Based, Remote-First Course
• Exercises
• Slides
• Video Tutorial

Time Estimate (Duration)

How long will it take to present this lesson? Put an "x" in the brackets for the one that applies.

• 1-5 Minutes
• 5-10 Minutes
• 15+ Minutes
• 1 hour or less

Prerequisite Skills

Participants will get the most from this lesson if they have familiarity with:
These are important to include in case someone wants to use this lesson plan in-person as a stand-alone lesson.

• Skill 1
• Skill 2

For example:

• Experience with HTML and CSS
• Completed the Basic WordPress Concepts lesson

Readiness Questions

These are important to include in case someone wants to use this lesson plan in-person as a stand-alone lesson.

• Question 1
• Question 2

A list of questions for participants to see if they have the background and skills necessary to learn and understand the lesson.

For example:

• Do you want to makes changes to your theme yourself?
• Do you know how to write CSS?

Slides

If someone wanted to run this lesson as a stand-alone Online Live Workshop or at an in-person WordCamp, you could create slides for this here; if you run a Live Online Workshop on one of these topics or find someone else has, related slides would be welcome!

Change the /repo-name/ in the link to match the URL name of this repo.

• Slides (files included in this repo)

Materials Needed

• Item 1
• Item 2

A list of files, resources, equipment, or other materials the presenter will need for the lesson.

For example:

• A local install of WordPress
• The files for the TwentySixteen theme

Notes for the Presenter

/Include any tips needed to present this topic for a Live Online Workshop or in an in-person classroom setting.

• Note 1
• Note 2

A list of any handy tips or other information for the presenter.

For example:

• Participants may need to download the TwentySixteen theme before beginning
• What to do if there’s no projector or internet available
• What to do if a participant doesn’t have the necessary set up
• How to handle different opinions about the topic

Lesson Outline

• First do this
• Then move on to this
• Finish with this

The plan for the lesson. Outline form works well.

For example:

• Talk about what a theme is
• Demonstrate how to install and activate a theme
• Practice exercises to have participants find and install a theme on their own site

Exercises

What someone will DO with what they learn in each lesson; most lessons have at least one related exercise.

Exercise name

Short description of what the exercise does and what skills or knowledge it reinforces.

• Short point or step of the exercise
• And another one

These are short or specific activities that help participants practice certain components of the lesson. They should not be fully scripted exercises, but rather something that participants could do on their own. For example, you can create an exercise based on one step of the Example Lesson.

Assessment

These assessments will be autograded on Learn.WordPress.org.
There should be one assessment item (or more) for each objective listed above. Each assessment item should support an objective; there should be none that don't.

Write out the question.

1. Option
2. Option
3. Option
4. Option

Answer: 3. Correct answer

A few questions to ask participants to evaluate their retention of the material presented. They should be a measure of whether the objectives were reached. Consider having a question for each objective.

Additional Resources

• Resource 1
• Resource 2

An optional section which can contain a list of resources that the presenter can use to get more information on the topic.

For example:

• Link to information on the Codex
• Theme Review Team's Handbook

Example Lesson [Written for a text-and-image based, multimedia course rather than for a live classroom setting]

An example of how the lesson plan can be implemented. Written in script form as one possible way an presenter might use this lesson plan at an event, with screenshots and instructions if necessary.

Section Heading for Example Lesson

You will likely need to break the Example Lesson down into multiple sections.

Lesson Wrap Up

Follow with the Exercises and Assessment outlined above.

[wparasae]

I need to figure out how to set up a temporary development environment. This is a bit of a stumbling block here for me since I've never done this before. Courtney swears it's possible to do this with our existing resources, so I will probably reach out to her about that.

[wparasae]

I set up a development environment using local; I'm working on an a workshop for this, but I'm not sure if it should be a separate issue or not. It's part of the course lesson itself, but it might need a separate thing? Not sure.. I'll ask in the meeting!

[wparasae]

Related Tutorial Issue Created (link here)

[wparasae]

This is ready for review: https://learn.wordpress.org/learn/lesson/setting-up-your-block-themes-development-environment/

[kaitohm]

This is now live!

[kaitohm]

This content has been published as part of a Course. Anyone is now free to pick this up and create a Lesson Plan that covers the same content.

Published as Course content here: https://learn.wordpress.org/learn/lesson/setting-up-your-block-themes-development-environment/

[wparasae]

@bsanevans Should this topic be merged with: #741 ? They're super similar!

[kaitohm]

Sure! I've closed the other one in favor of this one 👍

[Piyopiyo-Kitsune]

Can remove the Course content type label for this issue since a lesson plan needs to be created now?

[courtneyr-dev]

Key Make Posts/GitHub/Trac Issue(s):
Include Block Hooks in WordPress 6.4 (53987).
Block API: Stabilize Block Hooks feature (54293).
A developer news article is planned for during the 6.4 release cycle to provide up to date documentation.