AP CS A
Today was a lab day where students worked on their ASCII
art. I will have to take some pictures
of their work. Some students finished
today, I think I could have given them a day and a half to get this done, but I
am giving them tomorrow too.
They do have videos to watch as I embark on my first
“flipped class” adventure. I would never do this in a math class, but I think
in CS it might be the best instructional approach. I still feel like students are reluctant to
take risks and take on challenges if that means that they have homework to do.
AP CS P
Today we did the “sending binary messages” activity. It went short again, I should have had the
interactive notebook materials ready to go so we could have done that, but I
didn’t have the materials and students didn’t have their notebooks. SO… another day.
I had students write down their protocols since when I asked
one student to describe to the class how they were able to finish sending a
message so fast, he shrugged his shoulders and said “we just sent the message
every time”. Not the level of
information we are looking for. I am going to have students look at the
protocols again before we get to the sending messages activity.
Concepts of Advanced Algebra
I am really excited about this! I talked to a coworker of mine about having
students self-assess themselves for the pactice grade. I had tried the “non-grading” strategy with
my CSP students 3 years ago and I learned that grades tended to be more
correlated with student confidence, rather than understading or risk
taking.
This year, I made a rubric and we read an article about
struggling with content and coming back to concepts over time helps people
remember more and longer. Then we acted
out what the desired behavior looked like on some basic math problems. The goal here was not to necessarily learn
new content, but rather think about what an “A” student says or does in the
group to participate.
It went pretty well – each group of 4 had a role (an A, B, C
or D student) and they had to act like that student via the rubric’s
guidance. The students “acting” like “A”
students killed it! They were
AMAZING! So this was a great practice
for them, but my “D” students embraced their role a bit too much. In retrospect, I think I would have everyone
act like the “D” student for a while, then “C” student for 5 mintues, “B”
student for 5 minutes, and then “A” student last. I think this would ensure that EVERYONE had a
chance to embody “A” characteristics. I
also think they would have “wow, if we all are ‘A’ students, this is actually
pretty cool!” moment.
Tomorrow we will start with “real” content and “real”
grading.
One Good Thing
A student said to me after the Internet lesson in CSP, “wow,
every student should learn this! This is
really good to know”. At first I thought
he was buttering me up, but… he ensured me that was not the case. I LOVE teaching CSP – now that this is my
third year of it, I am really just loving every second of it. Going to 4 TeacherCons this summer helps me
take a more critical lens to my classroom too as I consider who is learning in
my room and how I know they are learning.
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