Days 1, 2, and 3: Opening week - year 6

One of the best things I did last year was keep a daily blog of what was happening.  I intend to repeat that this year.  I am also trying to make things tweets whenever possible and embed them here.

Day 1:

Day 1: freshmen only so I played “thirty one-derful” with students. Good low floor, high ceiling task for students that focuses on problem solving. Here’s the solution we got... an extension could be “how many ‘solutions’ are there”? #teach180 #iTeachCs #iTeachMath pic.twitter.com/aXL6dgKK0S

— Kaitie O'Bryan (@Kaitie_Obryan) September 4, 2018

Day 2:  Team building.  

This was "real day 1".  Next year I think I should just keep all day 1 activities the same for everything - my goals are always the same - to build collaborative problem solving skills and mentalities.  But this year I did everything different.

AP CSA
We did the paper airplane folding activity which went pretty well.  It get's so loud but student shave fun and work with one another.  Then students filled out a "get to know you survey"

AP CSP
We did the puzzle activity and then brainstormed answers to the questions "What behaviors/attudes helped you be successful in this task?" and "What would you do differently a second time around?"  Students put their post-it note answers to the question up on the whiteboard.

There a were a lot of post-its that mentioned "communication" as being a good/necessary thing, so together we unpacked what "good communication" actually looks like.

THEN, I overheard a student said they were frustrated in the task so the second hour we also did an activity where I read off emtions such as happy, frustrated, irritated, annoyed, accomplished, motivated, bored and students stood up when they felt like they experienced that emotion during the task.  I think this was a mini-connection to mindfulness and also lead nicely into talking about the bullseye of comfort which I feel like is SUPER relevant for CS.

I also used Sara VanDerWerf's name plates in this class - they really help me get names down.  Also, it reminded me that I needed to MODEL what a name plate looks like.  Students in my first class just wrote things about themselves which is fine, but less memorable and actually wrote very boring things like (I have a dog)... second hour when I modeled it, it got a lot better!

Geometry
This was a really quiet group.  We did Sara's number task but students were DEAD SILENT.  When we talked about what collaborative group work looks like, there really wasn't much they said.  I got out the inquiry cubes in an impromptu move.  That kinda helped with communication but they still feel really uncomfortable together.

Day 3: Starting some content

Normally I want to take all week for team building but I think students want to do some content earlier on.  I wanted to make the content relevant but also light.  This was the result.

AP CSA
We started Processing today.  I did Terrence's "pair programming warm up" and it was brilliant!  Students loved it and it totally modeled what I wanted it to.  Also, it was a real team builder between the pairs!

To do this, I had students think of an animal individually and then say that animal out loud to their partner on the count of 3.  Then they needed to draw that animal pair programming style - switching who was "driving" (in this case "drawing") every 45 seconds.  Here were some of the results.

Then we looked at the Processing reference for rect().  I asked students to write down 3 things they noiced and 2 questions they had.  Then I pulled out some key vocabulary, including the following:

• Reference/Documentation
• Method/function
• Parameter
• Data Types (floats)
• Syntax

Those all show up in the documentation.  I gave them a pretty straighforward section of code from Processing and asked them to fill in the missing comments.  I also introduced the idea of commenting at that time!  Together we decided what would make up a "good comment" for that space.

We talked about the orientation of the canvas as well and then I asked them to change the color of the rectangle, at which point we talked about RGB colors.

It was a crash course, but no one seemed too overwhelmed.  

At that point I had them do "pair programming" with "Processing Scavengar Hunt".  I had 3 minute intervals, but I think I could have made it longer.  Most students finished task 1, but not task 2.

The pair programming was WONDERFUL!  It took some of the work off me and there was TONS of collaboration.  Lots of talk and problem solving and a lot less stress for students.  They didn't feel like they were competing against eachother for speed but rather working together.   I am wondering when it makes sense to use this technique in class and when solo-programming is a good idea?

AP CSP

I decided to do the "Sending Binary Messages" task today.  It really is a low floor culture builder and it sneaks in content.  I added the twist of "you need to use 2 things" to build your device but I didn't like it.  It did force students to be more creative in building their devices but I got a lot of images of things.  I like scaffolding what students I have share, but it was hard since everyone had a "you just add more stuff to your device" method.   It still got the job done...

I didn't take any pictures since of my strict no-phones policy... but there were lots of intersting devices!

Geometry

I did a "math fight" for warm up on order of operations and the 4 4s task for practicing order of operations. 

Both were good... students talked a lot more on the 4 4s.  I then gave them a "practice solving equations" worksheet which highlighted some gaps.  I don't know if I go back and do more of that OR if I should embed that into some of the geometry we have planned for tomorrow...