D110: More ethics

Obligatory blog post here.

CSA - Multiple choice test on 2D arrays.  It took longer than I thought.

CSP - Ethics conversation day 3

Concepts - Trashketball review on trig

One Good Thing
I really appreciate that our department eats lunch together.  It makes it so much easier to communicate and keep a pulse on what is going on.  I know that is not the norm everywhere.

D109: FRQ and Ethics

Deja Vu today.

AP CSA
After noticing that students were doing really well in groups, I had them try an FRQ by themselves in 22.5 minutes.  Silent work time. 

Some students finished early and then were on their phones.  I wish I would have had a separate worksheet or activity for them to do when they were done.

But for the most part, it went pretty well.  Students seem to be getting hang of the FRQ style of things.

AP CSP
I did day 2 of ethics study.  I am going to write up a larger blog about this elsewhere.  Then we went over their test.

I think I freaked out some students about the multiple choice test.  It was hard, but honestly, probably harder than what they will see on the AP test. 

Concepts
We finished working on the trig packet.  We are going to do to trashketball on Monday, followed by a quiz, followed by 2 days of ACT practice.  I think this is the first time I have planned out the class for a full week.

One Good Thing
I was at a meeting with a student the other day who has a great amount of social sway over one of my classes.  I told him that with great power comes great responsibility.  Today he was the "model" responsible student and kept everyone on task.  It was wonderful

D108: FRQ and Ethics

AP CSA
Today students did the 2017 and 2016 FRQs on 2D arrays.  It showed that we are pretty close to getting to where we need to be, but not there yet.  Collaboratively, students were pretty much at 100% accuracy with missing the key word "new"

AP CSP
We did a short ethics conversation based on the facebook breech and then we took a quiz.  It took students about a half hour to do the quiz which was all JavaScript loops and Arrays.

Concepts
We went back to Trig today and did a packet on that.  We are going to finish the packet tomorrow.

One Good Thing
The ethics conversation went well.  I am always nervous about it.  I am going to add perhaps articles about how Obama used data too. 

D107: "Survey Says..." thoughts on pacing

AP CSA
Well today I gave a mini quiz on arrays - it went fairly well.  Today was also our last day to work on our Processing project. 

I gave students a rubric that went up to a "C" and everything else was "pizzaz points".  I learned this from another teacher I met at a code.org workshop.  I liked the idea because it sets a high ceiling. I know I need students to work on CS the whole time.  That needs to be a norm.  But here are some dilemmas with that:

1. Some students go work at home.  And that's fine - it is cool that they want to work at home, but I still need them to come to class, still working.  It ruins the culture when I have some students who are "done".
2. Being done means different things to different students.  Some students are trying their hardest and BARELY have the basics.  That's fine with me.  They are learning and struggling very productively.  Other students are really taking on big challenges with some pretty great successes.  That's fine with me too.  I know we want all students to get to the "same place" but dragging students to the finish line seems harmful.  This allows each student to be challenged in their ZPD. 

Some students HATE the "pizzaz points".  I get it.  They want to know how to get their A.  It feels arbitrary to them.  But I need them to work and challenge themselves.  If I set an A, I set a ceiling.  I don't know how to fix that. 

AP CSP

Students are finishing up their image scroller apps.  It is a good way to gauge who has a good handle on this content.  There is a lot to the task. 

I was trying to figure out where to go next so I asked the group. 

It seemed like there was a lot of off-task behavior, I so I wanted to have students self-report their on-task behavior.  Here were the results:

I think this data is fine, but I am hoping that the students on the "2" side realize that they were in part at fault here.  1 was "I haven't done anything" and a 5 was "I have been 100% on task".

From a pacing perspective, these were the results:

This was mostly good news.  I was concerned I was going too fast, but most students are reporting it is going at a reasonable pace.  I can also now focus on the 10 students reporting it is going a little fast.  I can make sure that we have something for those students. 

Finally, I asked them what they wanted to do next.  Their three major options were:

1. Have a new task that requires you to use code you already learned, with familiar user interface elements
2. Have a new task that requires you to use code you already learned, but use new user interface elements
3. Have a new task that requires you to learn new code, with familiar user interface elements

It is perhaps not surprising that students what to stay with the same content.  So, that's what we are going to do.  I am also going to provide student choices to do something that involves new content for students who are curious. 

Concepts

We reviewed the ACT responses today.  I had students correct half of their wrong answers.  Amazingly, many students got questions wrong that they EASILY were able to fix.  I don't get why students just guess on their ACT questions.  I think they are just avoiding work.  It is easier to guess and then sit there for the rest of the time.  I am going to try trashketball to re-engage them later.  Some students are making the most of the opportunity, others' are not. 

One Good Thing

I am so glad I did this project in CSA.  It really showed me that THIS is teaching CS - there is no one right way to do this.  Each student has a different idea and a different solution.  I feel better about that than how most my labs work...

D105 and D106: Welcome back from spring break

AP CSA

105: The first day back from spring break I talked a bit about jagged arrays and for-each loops in 2D arrays.  Then students did a few practice it problems to wipe off a few cob webs.

106: We started back on our Procecssing project.  I think next year I cannot do a project over break.  Students could not remember what they were working on or how it fit together.  It did make a good case for commenting code though!

AP CSP

105 and 106: I returned student's write up of the algorithm for the practice create to them.  A lot of students are putting event handlers inside functions or not understanding the rubric.  It makes me happy that we got that out of the way though.  We certainly need to do a bit more practice before doing the create. 

I have several students who are falling FAR behind.  I have been spot checking their progress on key stages like 15.15 and 16.8 which helps hold students accountable.

Today we are going back and doing 14 since I think that is a great performance-y task for students to really pay attention to detail and show that they can combine several ideas. 

I am thinking we will do one more project based assessment at the end here before doing the create task.

Concepts
105: We started back at class with doing some geometric Islamic drawings.  I wanted to give students a task that was different than what they have done before but still focused on some skills I want to develop like attention to detail and sense making.

106: We are in crunch time to the ACT so we did a practice ACT today and will go over the answers tomorrow.  I think I will make a trashketball activity for the next week just to mix it up a bit

One Good Thing
Students helping students.  I am thankful I have some students who are willing to help out and can do so in a non-condescending way.

D101: Practicing reading AP questions

AP CSA

On day 100 we made a little tri-fold on the difference between interfaces, concrete classes and abstract classes.  I should have put abstract classes in the middle but it helped organize the thinking a bit.

AP CSP

We did a peer review today on the hangman projects.  I messed this up.  I needed to do some norming around giving feedback.  I also don't know how to incorporate feedback.  Students are so reluctant to share their work before they are "done" but at the same time, they need to hear this feedback and make improvements.  I am not really sure how to do this in a timely way.

Concepts
We did a practice ACT today.  Again, I need to do a better job of prepping kids for this.  I gave students back their old ACT and asked them to answer the questions "Is the ACT important? Why or why not?" and "What do you want to do after high school?"

For the most part every student said the ACT was important if you wanted to go to college.  Not every student wanted to go to college but a good 80% did.  After that, we took the test, students took it a lot more seriously.   I need to do this again next year.

One Good Thing
I ran into a former student at my rock climbing gym the other day.  I had him as a senior in pre-calc.  In a school where some students feel "behind" because they will not get through Calc 2 by the end of their time in high school, he wasn't super accelerated.  Here's the cool part - he is a math major at the U in his senior year!  It goes to show, being super accelerated doesn't always open more doors, in fact, it might close doors if you are accelerated too much.