Day 91(?): After 4 snow days in a row...

AP CSP

One of my favorite pieces of this curriculum is all the unplugged lessons. I was with a facilitator who called it the “secret sauce” of the curriculum, which I love!

When we get deep into unit 5, I sometimes overlook the unplugged lessons un-intentionally. Today I did "if statements unplugged" from code.org with the class and it went pretty well. Here were some changes I made to the lesson:

• I taped a 5x5 grid on the floor and BEFORE giving students the the packets I put the code for the first example up on the board and had one student act as the “robot” and another student stand in the location of the “barrier”. Together we went line-by-line through the code. I think the visual of my hand “highlighting” the line we were on.
• In my second hour, I only gave students ONE copy of the worksheet per elbow-buddy-pair. That increased collaboration in the class as well.
• Finally, at the end I took a few students’ papers and put them under the document camera to show their hand written code. I then had two other students come to the front and act as the barriers/robots on the grid. From there we acted out the students’ code. We even had students try to “break” the algorithm by placing the barrier in different spots. It made for a nice whole-class-closure moment.

I thought about adding the "boolean game"  but honestly, we used pretty much the whole class hour for this task.

AP CSA

Today I had students create a UML class diagram for a law firm.  I need to find something that more students can relate to.  Too many students couldn't name what kinds of employees work at a law firm. It was a good way to re-introduce some UML with students after a long break.  Then students worked on practice it.

Geometry

Today I had students do 4 HARD proofs on half sheets of paper of different colors.  Students did one of the 4 at their table.  Then they made them into paper airplanes and we threw them around the classroom.  Students then found a sheet of paper of a different color and then found a friend with the same color as them.  Then they needed to fix their proofs and choose the "best" of the two which then we went over in class.

The proofs were a bit too hard for students... 

One Good Thing

I got a flat tire this morning, BUT the good thing was that one of my co-workers was able to take me to and from school which I was thankful for.