Day 121-123

Day 121: March 27

AP CSP: Today we did the “survival guide” but I paused after we looked at algorithms and asked students to go back and find an algorithm that they had already written that might meet the criteria set by the College Board. I had them look in their image scroller app, the color sleuth app, and a “skill practice app” I had them make as a project.

Students had to copy and paste their algorithm (or, really 3 algorithms - one parent and 2 child algorithms) into google classroom. Then students had to find 2 algorithms that met the criteria and one algorithm that fell short. I handed out candy to everyone who submitted one that students identified as “not quite right” as well as to anyone who could “workshop” the algorithm to make it fit the criteria. I tried to normalize/celebrate mistakes and not shame the students who maybe missed the mark - the whole class learns more when mistakes are made.

It was actually one of the better conversations we have had in class recently.

Day 122 - March 28

AP CSP - I asked students today to give me a thumbs up to thumbs down about how they were feeling about picking a topic. 80% were thumbs down, 20% were thumbs sideways.

I found the three “limiting a task” examples really helpful to show students the variety of things they could make and then we listened to this clip 2 about a female game designer who talked about how she created a game about her life. I think it provided a good example of another way students could make a game personal to them.

BUT the real magic happened when I had them go on a walk-and-talk with their elbow buddy for 7 minutes. One person from the pair brought their phone and set a 7 minute timer. They had 7 minutes to bounce ideas off of their partner while going on a walk and get back to the room.

As students got back to the room every single one of them had AN idea! It was amazing! Typically I have students sitting around on day 3 of the time and still with no ideas… now all of my students have ideas on day -1 of the performance task work time!

I know not all schools would be ok with setting students lose in the building without direct supervision, but I thought I would throw it out there to folks!

AP CSA - fractals in processing

Geometry - Volume... 

Day 123 - March 29

AP CSP:  Students got to work on their create projects. I am going to start stand-up meetings tomorrow.  I want students to answer the following questions:

1) What have you accomplished since last time?

2) What are you "stuck" on?

3) What do you hope to have done by next time?

We also needed to talk about what "good communication" looks like.  I see too many students avoiding eye contact and not listening to one another. 

AP CSA:  I had students try to create the Koch snowflake.  I need to make some refinements with the lesson.  We need to go over push and pop matrices so students know how to use them more next time. da

Day 112: Code-alongs and peer review

AP CSP

The last two days we have spent developing the "My Favorite Things" App together.  My thinking was that I love the "ColorSleuth Lesson" because it gets all students on the same page.

The My Favorite Things App is a little complicated and students tend to just skip it and then are in BIG trouble when it becomes an image scroller app.  This way all students (should) have a a functioning My Favorite Things App ready to go for the next lesson.

Overall, this was a good move.  I have about a total of 7/65 students who already finished it.  They did it at home (those buggers...) so they could do extensions or work on other work.  I have decided I am ok with this solution.  We are challenged to keep in mind student mental health, allowing those kids who worked outside of class some down time (or independently directed time) is and OK thing to do.

In my first hour the socratic method was a flop.  I mean, questions like "What is 2-1?" was met with silence.  Even when I asked them to talk to an elbow buddy about a question, it was silent.  So I made them go for a walk and talk to get energy up.  I played high energy music as they walked back to the room.  That helped a bit.

The next day, I asked students what the word "Assessment" meant.  They said "test".

Which, I get.  But I asked about what other kinds of ways to assess students there are.  That generated a few more ideas.  I was fairly transparent that when I ask the class a question, and it is silent, I cannot assess the class.  That is an informal assessment that lets me know that students are tracking with me.  Of course, there are always "formal assessments", but having students participate in informal assessments is more important to me.  (I told this all to students).  Today after that speech they seems a little more willing to engage.

Tomorrow we will pick up with pair programming with the image scroller app.

AP CSA
Today we did a peer review of their 2D array projects.  It was good to see students play with other programs - they were going strong into leaving feedback for about 15 minutes and then they reviewed the feedback.  I am not collecting their projects for another few days so they can make changes if they want, but in theory they were supposed to be done today.

Students writing feedback on pink sheets at each project

This is what the feedback sheet looked like - students needed to go to at least 4 projects - most went to more projects.

After that, we did two FRQ questions on 2D arrays.  We are ahead of where we were last year.  That means we have nearly 5 weeks for AP test prep.   I will be honest... that is too much time.  I am wondering if I could do a cool data project for a week of that time... I have already sent out feelers into the facebook land for ideas.

Geometry
Students tested today on trig.  We are doing "Proficiency Based Grading".  Don't ask me what that means... it has morphed a ton over time.  Right now, it means that our tests are aligned to learning targets (which the were before) and we put each learning target in the gradebook on a scale of 4 where 4 is "Mastery".  NOW... I will say this has raised a good question of "What is mastery in math?".  I would say mastering content means you can apply it in a novel context.  But what does that mean about the "exposure" topics you might cover.

Long story short... we are still working through this as a PLC.

One Good Thing
Our LNL Facilitator group met today and there were some good a-has with the group.  It is good to have such a fantastic group of allies in these teachers!

Also, I missed 2 days of project work time - typically students get crabby at me and are mad that I wasn't there to fix all of their problems.  BUT, I actually don't think a SINGLE student complained, that was nice!  And their projects were good!  Double win!

Day 99: Computational Thinking in Geometry

Geometry

Yesterday I found a stack of colored pencils taped together... I was not happy about it.  Students misused time and resources yesterday.  Today I showed them what I found, explained that ONE student did that, but the class as a whole could have benefited from more focus, AND that I expect today to be better.  It was.

SO, I saw an opportunity to do a computational thinking activity in geometry.  Because we are not testing on 30-60-90 and 45-45-90 triangles, I saw an opportunity to incorporate CT into class.

Special right triangles can be a unit where we apply the same rules in 100 different ways.  That is the WORST part about math.  Sometimes it takes creative thinking, but most of it is plug and chug. 

Originally, I thought students could make a Scratch program to help a user find the missing sides of their special right triangle.  BUT, that is a big jump.  Some of my students have never done Scratch before.  I was going to show them a "mini" program in hopes that would be enough, but even that seemed like a big jump.  Here was what I wanted to show them:

I decided to start with flow charts first.  I showed students this video:

I love this video so much.  Most students don't watch this show, but I think if nothing else, the video helps transition the class to thinking about flow charts.

Then I asked them to make a flow chart to determine if a triangle is a right, acute, or obtuse triangle.  Here is what they came up with.

Overall, pretty good!  I like that some students thought to ask "is it a triangle" first.  Most people stuck with simple yes/no questions, which is fine, but I think I could have pushed them to think, what other questions you could ask to streamline the process.

I was going to show them the program I created and connect it to their flowcharts, and I think you could do that.  You could make different programs for the different flowcharts to compare how the program would work differently - it could be a cool lesson!  But, that wasn't the goal for the day....

Then we went to 45-45-90 triangles.  The were asked to make a flow chart to determine the missing sides of a 45-45-90 triangle.  Here are some examples:

Some students were pretty stumped, but it created a good problem for them to think through in a different way.

We ran out of time, so we didn't get to transition to Scratch but I am glad we left that out.  At the end, most students felt successful - everyone had SOMETHING written down and felt like they could think in a different way.  I think moving to Scratch would have made some students really excited and engaged, but others would feel left out.  If I had another day, I would try to do the program in class, but the PLC is moving on to new content tomorrow, so... I will too. 

I could see bringing this back for when we cover SohCahToa later on.


AP CSP

Projects continued.  I did bring up some of the things I wrote about in my blog yesterday.  I didn't have students ask me those questions in class.  I had 2 students come in during our school-wide study hall to work on their projects.

A few other areas of opportunities I see:

• Students not understanding the scope of variables.
• In general control of variables seems to be tricky - doing x + 10 inside a call to setPosition won't change the value of x.  I used the anaology of a variable being a "box" and you can get things from the box or add things to the box etc.

In general, collaboration in hour 2 seems to be a win.  Most students are working with partners (as a required) and are experiencing success.  I have also started writing my "tips" on post it notes and then giving them to students as a "takeaway".  That seems to help too.  

Hour 1 is still working more independently and I think that will show in their projects.  I probably need to figure out how to do "feedback" tonight.

AP CSA

Students tested on the FRQ.

One Good Thing

In general, I was excited to be able to try something new in Geometry.  I had never done this before with students and it was clearly "computational thinking" with a low floor - every student was able to do it.  I think I could raise the ceiling by asking students to develop their own questions that might be solved by an algorithm, and then let them make flow charts for those.

Day 98: Trying to perfect projects

AP CSP

Day 98 - Oops I did it again - I got two of the same class on different tasks.  I noticed my first hour was really not sure how to do much of anything in app lab.  Even simple things like event handlers were a struggle for them.  In their defense, it had been a while.  Also, we have had bad weather all week making my first hour barely half there at the start of the hour.  SO partner work just fell apart.  For this reason I decided to do "ColorSleuth" as a class first to model the process of chipping away at a task.  ColorSlueth took 2 days for the class to do. 

My other hour I asked to rate on a scale from 0 to 5 how they were feeling about their projects.  I got a lot of 5s ("get out of my way, I have this") and a few 3s ("I am not sure about this, I need some help but I can do it") and nothing below a 3 really.  So, I decided to let them work.  That seemed to be a good decision.  I think we need to talk about the following:

• Refactoring code.  We should be looking for repetitive code and starting to put that into a function.  I don't see many students writing functions.
• Why "studentInput4" == 10 doesn't work.  Students see UI elements as variables.  I get that they see that a UI may contain information you want, but you need to GET that information from the element.  I also want to stress that variables may be a better way to get that information.
• Yes, you need to have some element of newness to your game.  Students are making games where they get asked the same 3 questions and are just making TONS of screens (one for each question, one for each answer, etc).  That isn't a game... that's not fun.

I still need to think about how to use/incorporate feedback for this project. 

AP CSA

I went over student quizzes.  This was a longer unit so I gave a quiz on polymorphism which was a good thing.  I caught a few student misconceptions especially around constructors.  We also did a lot of Kahoot to build vocabulary. 

Today they took a MC test on Polymorphism.  Tomorrow is FRQ.  Then we are done with the hardest unit of the year, IMO!

Geometry

Rough day for Geometry.  A lot of distracted behavior.  Not malicious behavior, just squirrely.

I did interactive notes for special right triangles.  It was like herding cats

A dark picture of the notes we took

.

I wanted to do an interactive practice activity with students but many students were uncomfortable with their problems I gave them.  So, we did a mini version of that today.  Tomorrow we are going to finish up 45-45-90 and then I think I am going to give them some VERY structured practice.  It is not my favorite, but it was tough to get any momentum today.  The structure can build in momentum for the hour, I hope. 

One Good Thing

The drive home wasn't bad. 

Day 95: Figuring out the project for CSP

CSP

Well - I dropped the ball here.  We had bad roads which meant that students showed up late first hour which made it difficult to get started.  In my effort to procrastinate, I had students develop extensions for the math app I showed and then also brainstorm ideas for themes/skills.  Then we went around the room and listed their ideas on the board.  That was a really good move!  The diversity of ideas was great!

Here's what they came up with:

How could the programmer improve this app?

• Make a penalty for getting something wrong
• Add different functions other than addition
• When you get to the "you win screen", it could automatically reset
• Add a number of lives (and a losing screen)
• Clearer directions (with objective)
• Icon pop up when you get it correct to make it more clear
• Add a time limit
• If the player makes a mistake, make the rocket go down. 

THEN, I was kinda freaking out about students not having partners.  I intentionally grouped students but then so many students were gone that any "intentionally" was gone.  SO I told students they needed to co-plan with another student, but starting Friday (after 2 days of work time) they could do individual projects if they wanted.

I also feel like broadening it to "skill" practice instead of "math practice" was a bad idea.  Students wanted to practice Spanish or do trivia which is better suited for a list rather than variables... I think for this group I might do a random lesson with lists to help out those who are interested.

My 2nd hour I restricted it to "math"so I think that was helpful.

Co-planning was important for collaboration - I saw a lot of students having good discussions around that.  We will see as tomorrow progresses.  I wish we were on bigger screens to help students see eachother's work.

AP CSA

Students did a quiz today and then worked on two FRQs.

Geometry

I took students down to the commons to demonstrate the mirror activity for similar triangles.  The rest of the time they worked on homework.  I think it was a good idea to demo it the day before (before students had mirrors or tape measures in their hands)

Day 92: Partners - when? How?

AP CSP 

We submitted the explore yesterday.  Today we did U5L8 on if statements.  I thought about adding booleans to the notebooks, but opted for an oral explanation in class instead.  I showed students some boolean expressions and asked them what it meant.  I gave them some true and false ones. 

For example, I gave them a set like this:

1. 3 > 2;
2. 3<=3;
3. 5<=3;
4. 6 == 6;
5. 7 != 7;
6. 3 != 7;
7. "hey"=="hey";
8. "Hey" == "hey";

I showed != too and thought about && and || but thought that might be too much.  From there I let them work individually or in pairs on the programming levels.  I suggested that the skip the videos and readings since I went over that in class. 

This level is supposed to take 80 minutes and covers some things about drop downs too.  I asked students to finish through 14 (right before drop downs).  Some students got pretty close to finishing the whole thing.

For the most part, students worked individually.   Those who worked together had good conversations.

I did have a few kids drop from first semester which, I don't love, but I do love the extra physical space now in the room.  It allows me to physically sit next to students who are "stuck" (more realistically, they are a combination of stuck and distracted - they get a little stuck and prefer to be distracted than stuck).

I made new seating charts based on students perceived comfort with programming. 

I had students rank themseleves on a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being "I am struggling here" and 5 being "I need more of a challenge".  I had very few 1s and 2s but I also wonder if that is a function of some of our building culture.   Maybe it is accurate.  Hard to tell.

TBH, I don't think it matters which it is.  I am more interested in how they perceive themselves.  I made a seating chart to pair people who felt that their abilities were similar.

Tomorrow we start a project.  I went back and forth on forcing them to collaborate.  I just don't know what to do.  Part of me wants to say "students are mature enough to choose what they want to do" and another part of me is thinking "my job as a teacher is to provide them with new experiences that challenge them".  I don't know what is right.  I am pro-student choice, but I also know that some students may not feel comfortable finding a partner themselves and by assigning partners, they don't have to think about that.

SO... Interestingly enough, on this same survey one student said "I like working alone because I can work on my own pace" - this was without any mention of "partner work" - clearly she felt strongly enough about this to mention it without any prompting. 

Right now I am leaning toward partner work.  I think I can give them more choices later.  I could see asking students to work together for the first 3 days and then letting them go independent on the last two... we will see...

AP CSA
Students are working on the customer lab.  Students are getting stuck on the compareTo and equals method, but I think that the inheritance part is going well.

Geometry
We did a ton of reflection today using Hagel's reflection form.  I know that it went better than simply handing back homework checks with an "any questions" ending.  It took about half the hour. 

One good thing
I am enjoying geometry.  It is nice.

Day 91(?): After 4 snow days in a row...

AP CSP

One of my favorite pieces of this curriculum is all the unplugged lessons. I was with a facilitator who called it the “secret sauce” of the curriculum, which I love!

When we get deep into unit 5, I sometimes overlook the unplugged lessons un-intentionally. Today I did "if statements unplugged" from code.org with the class and it went pretty well. Here were some changes I made to the lesson:

• I taped a 5x5 grid on the floor and BEFORE giving students the the packets I put the code for the first example up on the board and had one student act as the “robot” and another student stand in the location of the “barrier”. Together we went line-by-line through the code. I think the visual of my hand “highlighting” the line we were on.
• In my second hour, I only gave students ONE copy of the worksheet per elbow-buddy-pair. That increased collaboration in the class as well.
• Finally, at the end I took a few students’ papers and put them under the document camera to show their hand written code. I then had two other students come to the front and act as the barriers/robots on the grid. From there we acted out the students’ code. We even had students try to “break” the algorithm by placing the barrier in different spots. It made for a nice whole-class-closure moment.

I thought about adding the "boolean game"  but honestly, we used pretty much the whole class hour for this task.

AP CSA

Today I had students create a UML class diagram for a law firm.  I need to find something that more students can relate to.  Too many students couldn't name what kinds of employees work at a law firm. It was a good way to re-introduce some UML with students after a long break.  Then students worked on practice it.

Geometry

Today I had students do 4 HARD proofs on half sheets of paper of different colors.  Students did one of the 4 at their table.  Then they made them into paper airplanes and we threw them around the classroom.  Students then found a sheet of paper of a different color and then found a friend with the same color as them.  Then they needed to fix their proofs and choose the "best" of the two which then we went over in class.

The proofs were a bit too hard for students... 

One Good Thing

I got a flat tire this morning, BUT the good thing was that one of my co-workers was able to take me to and from school which I was thankful for.

Day 84 (and 83 retrospectively)

AP CSP

On day 83 we did a "rainbow logic" activity and then did a "guess who" questioning activity.  It was a good way to start the semester.

Today we worked on the explore.  I swear we could get this done in one more day.  Tomorrow I need to go through and see where everyone is.  There is a lot of off task behavior... I don't know how to handle that for this "designated time" - it does set a bad precedent.

AP CSA

On day 83 we did a sorting activity and reviewed the exam.  The sorting activity was just fine - students didn't do a great job of writing their algorithm - I maybe should have given them the opportunity to refine it as they saw some of the issues.

Today we started with polymorphism.  

Day 85

AP CSA

Today we worked on the "structure lab" - I realized that the best way to monitor student progress was to check in with students the last 10 minutes of class and ask to see their toString method in a parent class.  I wanted to see that they used "super.toString" - some didn't, but when I talked to them about it they had a good a-ha about it.  I also handed out a worksheet - I think more mini unplugged practice like this is helpful.

Day 84: Start of semester 2

AP CSP

On day 83 we did a "rainbow logic" activity and then did a "guess who" questioning activity.  It was a good way to start the semester.

Today we worked on the explore.  I swear we could get this done in one more day.  Tomorrow I need to go through and see where everyone is.  There is a lot of off task behavior... I don't know how to handle that for this "designated time" - it does set a bad precedent.

AP CSA

On day 83 we did a sorting activity and reviewed the exam.  The sorting activity was just fine - students didn't do a great job of writing their algorithm - I maybe should have given them the opportunity to refine it as they saw some of the issues.

Today we started with polymorphism.  I had students create a UML diagram of these different classes.  It was amazing how quickly the idea of "oh we can use the Person class to help with Student" came up.  

From there we did a stand-and-talk looking at 2 different classes and one runner class with output.  That actually went really well - I wish I would have had one copy per student for them to mark up.  Some student known

We then added to our tri-folded notes. 

Then we did a quick code along with ChildrensBook and Book. 

It was an action packed hour!  I am feeling good about how we are starting this - I think the trifold notes could have waited as a "summary" a few days later.  Right now, I don't think it meant a lot to students as we were writing.

Overall, students had great questions about this new content. 

Geometry

Yesterday we did the rainbow logic activity as a team builder.  Then I had them fill out a card with 2 truths and a lie.  I am going to use this to choose students in the future.

I introduced proportions today.  They struggled with when fractions are negative how you handle the negative sign.  They also struggled with setting up the proportion with labels.  We did speed dating instead of homework, and I think that went well - I need to structure that more - some super motivated students were just swapping problems without talking about it.  I think next time I could have them go to a different table each time to get more movement in the classroom.

One Good Thing

I felt good about what happened in geometry today.  I also feel good about what I have coming up in geometry. 

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! 

Day XX: Checking in

This has been so crazy, but here are where my classes are at:

AP CSA
We took a test on arrays and arrayLists today.  Tomorrow we start our "holiday" project.  Students have 4 days to work on it.  I have done more to develop the rubric.

AP CSP
This is students' second day of working on the MadLib Project.  I had them finish a planning document which was a good addition. 

Many students are still a bit clueless as to "what do I do now".  Once they get away from the scaffold of code.org they cannot organize their thinking.  I think this is a good reason to move away from the scaffolding early and frequently...

Geometry
Aaron taught my class today so I could go to a meeting with Theresa.  We test on Wednesday on the first part of the polygon unit.

One Good Thing.
Talking with Theresa was REALLY good.  I am so excited for the next part of Lunch and Learn.

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.