Day 54: Maybe Less IS more - AP CSA

Day 54 had a lot going on so I am splitting it into separate posts.  This one was for CSA.

I did a live lecture today that went really well.  Students watched a 7 minute video on the BASICS of arrays on CodeHS the night before and I threatened them with a quiz.  There was no quiz, but the threat was really effective!

Students came with some basic knowledge and then we did a basic problem together.  I had thought of the problem ahead of time, but did not do it myself.  I think that worked out really well actually because I very authentically thought out-loud with my students.  It was kind of like we were pair programming where I was one part of the pair and they were the other part.   I made a TON of mistakes and students caught them, or sometimes I would catch them but still let students puzzle through them.

Here was the task:

We started by having students describe what their strategy would be for solving this problem.  I outlined what they said on a white board.   During the hour, I would refer back to this original outline and either add to it or check-off what we had completed.  I wanted to model talking LESS about the actual code and MORE about the thinking.  I see my students who struggle most want to talk about the "for loop" or what ever coding construct right away in a problem.  My more successful students talk strategy rather than syntax.  It might just be because they are more comfortable with syntax so they don't need validation on syntax where as my struggling students do need that validation, but I still think it is important to come up with a strategy before getting too far in the weeds.

At the end of the hour I gave students time to fill out a reflection.  I know that I model best programming practices when we do these "code-alongs" but it occurred to me that students might not know that.  NAMING those practices in written form I think helped call that out.  According to this survey, many students were able to recognize it after the fact too.

I also asked them some straight-forward questions like:

• What is one thing you learned today?
• What is one question you still have after today?
• What are you planning on doing to get these questions resolved after today?

Their answers were pretty straight-forward, but again, it was a nice way to put a bow on the day and ensure that students could name what they learned.

We didn't finish the task, but I am going to QUICKLY finish it tomorrow at the start of class without so much interaction from the class.