Day 61: Stand and talk in CSA

CSP
I had students do pair programming to learn about variables today.  I opened up the class doing guided notes in their notebooks.  I liked doing that instead of watching the video on variables since I felt like it helps students have something to hold on to from the variables lesson.

Some students finished the code.org lesson in class, but about half did not.  For that reason, I am going to give them another day to work on it.  I need to come up with another extension for students who are finished.


Geometry
I did an activity with this group today that I should have done a while ago.  There were 4 different sheets of 4 different colors of different proofs. 

This would have been a good activity to do at the beginning of this unit because A) I think students have an easier time with flowchart proofs - it is easier to see where things are going to and coming from.  B) Giving students the statements to use allowed them to think more about how they will use specific vocabulary rather than determining what the right vocabulary is.

Our homework in this class has been SUPER proof heavy, and I think practicing proofs is the best way to learn the material, but we needed to start even slower to proofs.  We needed to build reasoning and then do activities like this before having students do tons of two-column proofs.


CSA
We did a stand and talk in CSA today to talk about ArrayLists.  We did some notes afterward, but since the notes weren't DIRECTLY on the stand and talk, it was difficult to tell how effective the exercise was.  I did hear a lot of students talking about what they "knew" in the code I provided them.  I am wondering how I can do this with something like abstract classes later.

We finished with about 15 minutes left which wasn't enough time to do the code-along/live lecture that I wanted to do so we will push that back a day.