Day 14: Let's back it up

AP CSA

I felt like everything was going fine in AP CSA, but today that all came crashing down.  I gave students two problems to think about - one that had them find a random number, and another that asked them to write a method that converted from Celsius to Fahrenheit.

When we talked about them in class, I got a whole lot of silence.  Some students didn't do their homework, others did it in correctly, and others were not interested in sharing.

I think many students didn't see the need for creating a method.  We talked about this for the drawFish program and when we did the "stars and stripes" program, but apparently that didn't sync in.  I think maybe a bit more practice is needed and some emphasis on why we use methods.  Maybe I can have them write a program where they need to do something over and over again to show them why functions with a parameter are necessary.  That was supposed to be the fish program, but it didn't stick.  I might try to make the connection back to fish tomorrow.

We started doing some practice.it problems which highlighted some vocab issues we have in the class as well.  So far we have been doing bigger labs, but I think we need to work in some unplugged practice and perhaps some of practice.it's self check problems.  I guess that means that I gavev some work I need to do tonight...

AP CSP

Kids were naughty today.  It is all the side conversations that are just disrespectful.  We are moving to the forum tomorrow.  While that format is less fun from a collaboration perspective, maybe it will cut down on some of the side conversations.  We are starting our unit 1 project tomorrow.

Concepts
We did two different desmos activities about systems of equations.  They were both really good.  We did a polygraph which raised up some vocab and then a more structured desmos activity to talk about what it means to have a "solution" to a linear equation.  So far, I like this format of having students do a desmos activity on Mondays, harkness Tuesday-Thursday and then quiz on Friday.

One Good Thing

Coming up with "one good thing" today was challenging.  I think it might be with my concepts students - my para has commented that overall it is a pretty engaged group.  Distracted? yes. But, if you can remove distractions, they are engaged.  I do have some work to do with my introverted students - or maybe I need to