Day 92: Partners - when? How?

AP CSP 

We submitted the explore yesterday.  Today we did U5L8 on if statements.  I thought about adding booleans to the notebooks, but opted for an oral explanation in class instead.  I showed students some boolean expressions and asked them what it meant.  I gave them some true and false ones. 

For example, I gave them a set like this:

1. 3 > 2;
2. 3<=3;
3. 5<=3;
4. 6 == 6;
5. 7 != 7;
6. 3 != 7;
7. "hey"=="hey";
8. "Hey" == "hey";

I showed != too and thought about && and || but thought that might be too much.  From there I let them work individually or in pairs on the programming levels.  I suggested that the skip the videos and readings since I went over that in class. 

This level is supposed to take 80 minutes and covers some things about drop downs too.  I asked students to finish through 14 (right before drop downs).  Some students got pretty close to finishing the whole thing.

For the most part, students worked individually.   Those who worked together had good conversations.

I did have a few kids drop from first semester which, I don't love, but I do love the extra physical space now in the room.  It allows me to physically sit next to students who are "stuck" (more realistically, they are a combination of stuck and distracted - they get a little stuck and prefer to be distracted than stuck).

I made new seating charts based on students perceived comfort with programming. 

I had students rank themseleves on a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being "I am struggling here" and 5 being "I need more of a challenge".  I had very few 1s and 2s but I also wonder if that is a function of some of our building culture.   Maybe it is accurate.  Hard to tell.

TBH, I don't think it matters which it is.  I am more interested in how they perceive themselves.  I made a seating chart to pair people who felt that their abilities were similar.

Tomorrow we start a project.  I went back and forth on forcing them to collaborate.  I just don't know what to do.  Part of me wants to say "students are mature enough to choose what they want to do" and another part of me is thinking "my job as a teacher is to provide them with new experiences that challenge them".  I don't know what is right.  I am pro-student choice, but I also know that some students may not feel comfortable finding a partner themselves and by assigning partners, they don't have to think about that.

SO... Interestingly enough, on this same survey one student said "I like working alone because I can work on my own pace" - this was without any mention of "partner work" - clearly she felt strongly enough about this to mention it without any prompting. 

Right now I am leaning toward partner work.  I think I can give them more choices later.  I could see asking students to work together for the first 3 days and then letting them go independent on the last two... we will see...

AP CSA
Students are working on the customer lab.  Students are getting stuck on the compareTo and equals method, but I think that the inheritance part is going well.

Geometry
We did a ton of reflection today using Hagel's reflection form.  I know that it went better than simply handing back homework checks with an "any questions" ending.  It took about half the hour. 

One good thing
I am enjoying geometry.  It is nice.