Day 53: New teaching strategies.

AP CSP 

I wanted to review some programming concepts before going back to programming. They are still struggling with functions. They don't know how to use parameters in them. I did a little review with students before we started in my 2nd hour. That help a lot in my 2nd hour.

They also struggled with reading the questions. I think it would be better to add images to help them imagine what the product should look like or have concrete examples of function calls and what it produces. Right now, I have simplified the "how to use parameters" lesson to 3 parts:

1. You need to define a function with parameters
2. You need to use those parameter names inside your function definition
3. When you call that function you need to give values for those parameters. 

That checklist seems to help but I think next year I would do a code-along on this day on one of the tasks to model the thinking process.  I might do that at the start of the hour tomorrow...

In terms of the actual problems:

• The Olympic rings also had students take the easy way out without overlapping. I let that pass. 
• The ZigZag was tricky too - originally I made that strech across the whole screen which is TOUGH mathematically (and impossible for some inputs) but that could be a cool challenge problem. 

Honestly, students did struggle productively during this time. We did pair programming which helped. I was happy to SEE the struggle. Sometimes when students are on computers it is hard to see them wrestling with the ideas.

I ended with a "Pair Programming Exit Ticket" based on some things I had seen on Twitter.  I will need to review that data before I can comment on it.


AP CSA 
Taking a page from Dan Schnieder, I had students "fix my code". You can find the files here. Essentially I gave them nested loop problems that didn't work and they needed to fix them.

 

I also had students do an "unplugged warm up" on paper to help trace code in nested for loops. That was also a win. It forced students to think.

Based on the student feedback, I had students do more reflection in a google quiz.  Again, I need to review it.


Geometry
In Geometry, we derived the Exterior Angle Theorem. Students did 3 problems and we noticed the same numbers kept popping up. I asked, is there a short cut we could use here.

One student said "the outside angle is the sum of the two given angles". I gave her a problem like this...

... She said that's not what she meant. So then together we proved the Exterior Angle Theorem and then I displayed it on the board and it is REALLY wordy. Gross wordy. We re-framed it in what we just saw.

To be honest, this seems like a goofy theorem to prioritize.  Students can derive everything by just knowing triangle angle sum and that a linear pair is supplementary. I think next year I might not even show this slide.

From there, I have students an exit ticket and said I would give them their homework when they got the exit ticket right. I love this strategy, I get 100% participation on exit tickets and students get started right away on homework.  It is like they think it is a "treat" to do their homework.