Day 19: Finding the balance

AP CSA

At this point I have officially moved the test back a full week from when I normally intended to hold it.  What I have learned:

• More formatives (beyond the labs) are needed.  I am thinking of 
• Adding warm-ups that ask students to write code by hand while their computers are getting started
• Quizzes that are pencil and paper based - maybe on google.  I don't know how to do this securely on laptops.
• Maybe a Kahoot type of thing... although from here I think the questions might be too complicated to do via Kahoot.

I am making a practice quiz for students to look at tomorrow in class. 

Today we did a bit more of a codealong but I felt like at times I went too far along the lines of "doing it for the students".  I need to find a better balance there.  Any time when a student asks me to "go back to a previous screen" I feel like they are just copying down what I have. 

AP CSP

We did flash talks today.  I can see we need to do a better job of CLEARLY stating our opinion on an issue.  So far the 10 hundred most common words hasn't been as popular as I thought that it would be.  Some people are doing a great job though...

Concepts

OUCH.  Today was rough.  It ended with us all putting away our laptops and writing about our feelings.  I still have to read what students wrote, but I am hoping it will give insight as to what needs to change.  I have some ideas, but I think having students know that it is important that we figure this out together is important.  

The short story is, we did desmos activities today, but students were so prone to distraction - there was tons of yelling back and forth about off task things.

One Good Thing

TBH it was hard to find one good thing about teaching today, but then my previous students fixed all that.  In a random coincidence, three former students made an appearance in my day - one in person, one via post card, and one via email.  It certainly made my day better!  Two are doing cool things in college with what they learned in my CSP class and then one is continuing to do cool things at my school.