The ‘investigate’ stage gives students some example code and asks them questions about it to check their understanding. I use the block model to plan my questions. Try it, it’s really useful.

It is possible to output some consecutive items from a list by customising the print function to add a start and end index for the output.

There are a couple of traps to be careful of here.

The start value IS included in the output.

The end value IS NOT included in the output.

# Create and populate a list
countries = ["UK", "USA", "Chad", "Australia", "Thailand"]

# Outputs 'USA', 'Chad', 'Australia'

print(countries[1:4])

# Outputs from the beginning of the list to 'Chad'.

print(countries[:3])

# Outputs from 'USA' to the end of the list.

print(countries[1:])

• Square brackets for items in the list.
• Commas between each item in the list.
• String items are in quotation marks.
• Range – the end value is NOT included in the output.
• Search – not initialising counter OUTSIDE the loop.
• Search – not incrementing counter INSIDE the loop.