Day YY:

What. A. Whirlwind.  I went to New Zealand for the break and it was tough to get prepped before I left and to get caught up afterwards.

AP CSP
I actually like my flow this year.  Students researched a "data innovation" for unit 4 and then submitted their responses and I graded it, they re-did it, and I re-graded it.  Then they did the "full practice explore" on the same innovation.  Because they had already perfected about half of the task, they only had half left.  Then, when I graded it, it was really easy - they did really well!  During the final time, they are going to work on the "real Explore".

I am worried that kids are going to get bored with 8 hours of Explore time.  I have a few days that I am going to miss in February for PD, so I might make those "work days".  I TRULY believe that after all of our prep, my students can mostly get this done in 2-3 hours.   I figure doing 1.5 hours on the exam day and 2 days next week, most students will be done at that point.

Then we can jump back into programming!

AP CSA
Some how we were able to squeeze in Interfaces before the semester break!  Once again, there were a few students who just bombed the quiz.  I think they had forgotten how a basic class/method header works.  Next year, I think I will give a "practice quiz" first just to force them to think about it.  OR OR OR maybe we can do "find the errors" activity???  I haven't done that yet.  I should.

I reached out to another AP CSA teacher about what she did for a review for the class and she said, I don't.  That was good to hear.  Today (the day before the final) I returned the Interface quiz and then covered topics that students were a bit shaky on including: Math.random(), String methods, for-each loops

Geometry
I played Taboo with my geometry students to review for the quadrilaterals test.  At first they complained.

I get so frustrated when students complain about doing something fun.  Mainly because it takes a lot of my time to get it put together.  I was pretty transparent with them on that fact.  They seemed get into line a bit more.

We started by playing Taboo as a class on the board.  I had two people who (presumably) knew how to play and one person turned away from the board.  The other person could see the board as I put a "card" under the document camera.  Then they explained the word and the class held them accountable.  We did 2 rounds like that and then I gave students their individual cards.  I actually played with a group and it went really well.

BUT, and this is important, it is TOUGH for ELL students.  A friend of mine was dating a guy whose first language was Spanish, and while conversing with him you wouldn't necessarily think English was his second language, playing Taboo was tough for him. 

So, the question is, what supports can you put in place?  I cannot answer that question now.  My student I was most concerned about wanted to work on something else so I accommodated that request but I didn't love that solution.

One Good Thing
I am so thankful for my Lunch and Learn team!