D75: Who gets it

Disclaimer here - I always bemoan the fact that teachers complain about students who don't "get" the content.  It is literally a teacher's job to make sure students "get" the content.  Teachers need to meet students where they are at, but at the same time the student does have a responsibility to follow along to a certain extent.

To put this in images of cute animals... a student cannot be doing this:

But honestly most my students who don't get it are more like this:

... just a tinge distracted.  Honestly, if I could find a dog staring at a SmartPhone, that would probably be the best representation of why my students struggle.  I try to crack down on smart phones, but with laptops out, it is SUPER easy to hide them... ugh... another rant for another day...

BUT...

Here's what happened today.

AP CSA: 
Students took a test on ArrayLists.  I think I over-prepared them a tinge for the test.  I think next year I want to re-examine the multiple choice test and make it a bit more rigorous.  Overall students did well which was a good thing.

It is interesting that I have some students who had slid off the A train earlier in the year and now are getting back on.  I really attribute that to the work THEY have done though.  They took it in their own hands to use other resources available to them.  I am trying to figure out how I keep everyone on the train to begin with.  I think I could slow down more in the beginning.  That would be a benefit for everyone.  I think more frequent quizzes would also help in the beginning.

For those students who are still not "getting it", I am not really sure what to do.  Another AP CSA teacher I collaborate with says that the course isn't for everyone.  If a student is going to wait for the teacher to tell them exactly what to do, no learning is going to happen.  I do agree with that to a certain extent.  I can tell them what code to write, but they will not learn how to actually program... they need to do some thinking at some point. I need to be a bit more transparent about that with students.  I think back to the list of what does participation look like? in a harkness classroom... I wonder if developing a list like that for CSA would be helpful for students (and probably myself too).

AP CSP
I am glad we are taking time to do this mini project.  I need to go back and reinforce the idea that the computer only shows information that is stored in the computer.  What I mean by that, is that we need to talk about variables, why we use them, how scope works, what does it mean to initialize vs. update a variable... all of that.   Next year I think I need to do more unplugged worksheets/activities around this.

It is fascinating to see students who "get it" grow in confidence.  I can't really describe it, but it just "clicks" for some students - their thinking is spot on.  They can break down problems into smaller problems.  They try stuff.  My biggest issue in this class is students who "don't get it", try stuff, and then erase it.   It is so hard to be able to see what is going on in their heads without any evidence.

I also need to have a conversation with students about helping others.  Some of the "get it" students are "helping" others by giving them their code.  Uhhh... not helpful.

I would love to have a TA in this class.  With 41 students, I think having one other person to help troubleshoot in a productive way would be amazing.

Concepts
Well, our test didn't go well.  I gave it back to students to review with a partner.  That went well.

One Good Thing
I realize that I have a "concepts" class which suggests leveling, but I am thankful our school doesn't have more of that.  We don't have honors and concepts every thing.  This is a win for students and teachers.

D74: Getting more practice

AP CSA
Today students wrote up solutions Harkness style to prep for a test tomorrow.  For the most part I love this teaching technique... I just need to figure out a way to do that for larger classes...

I am pushing students harder than I think I need to in this unit, but I am hoping it will pay off.  We have done a lot of work with having separate classes interact with one another.  Next we take on inheritance.

AP CSP
After doing ColorSleuth, I had students make a "Space Math" App that Hannah showed me yesterday.  I wanted to get away from a color app for my color blind students.  I think it will be a good exercise.

I am noticing that students seem to want to store variables in labels rather than store labels in variables.  It seems like students don't really have a firm grasp on what a variable is and how to use it effectively.  That was surprising to me.

Concepts
Students tested today on exponents. 

One Good Thing
Students seem to be getting for each loops more now.  I think I didn't do enough direct teaching of what a For-each loop is but through application, students seem to have it.  I really need to put together an interactive notebook for this class!

D73: Introduction to processing

AP CSA

Today students took a mini-"quiz" - really it was supposed to be a real quiz but I didn't want to spend that much time on it so I made it a warm-up.  That was good though.  I need to remember to do more warm-ups.

Then we did a bit of work in Processing.  This was students first time using processing.  We created a "bubble" sketch where bubbles rose to the top of the screen.  I gave them the bubble class and we added some material in the set-up and draw functions.

It was a shortened hour, but I think the skeleton of the lesson was good - I had extensions ready for students to try.  

I teased students a bit with our project next week which will be all processing.  One of my students left saying that he was really looking forward to the project next week - me too!

AP CSP

We continued adding the scoring mechanism for the color sleuth project.  Walking around and helping students, I realized there still are some big gaps in understanding. There were people putting variables inside methods, methods inside methods, if statements just hanging out... it wasn't pretty.  I think I need to give students some more independent project/tasks to see what they can do.  Right now, I am thinking of  the following:

• Make hangman
• Make an escape room
• Make a Simon-game
• Make a math-fact practice game
• Make a "guess the color" game

I would like to characterize these by difficulty to see what I should have students do.

Concepts

Exponents continued today - I think students actually kinda liked it.  That was surprising!  We quiz on it tomorrow!

One Good Thing

I said NO to someone today!  Another teacher was putting together something and it sounded awesome but I said I wouldn't be able to do it.  I feel relieved.  Also... I didn't wear makeup today so I think people felt like I looked overwhelmed :)

D71-72: FRQs and ColorSleuth

AP CSA

I had students do 4 FRQs using arrayLists.  Here's the things I would do differently:

• I printed out student solutions, but didn't use them.  This late in the game, students can do it themselves.  I think next time I would do some of these at the beginning of the unit to give students an idea of how they would use this in an AP context - solutions can be a nice sense-making crutch.
• Smaller groups.  I had students working in groups of 5 - that was too big.  I need to do pairs or groups of 2.

Overall, some of the problems were a little beyond what students were comfortable with - I think it pushed them to the "stretch" zone which was a good thing. 

AP CSP

We are getting toward the end of unit.  I did the ColorSleuth App "code-along-style" -  I just love that style of teaching.  I need to find more tasks that are like this.

Concepts

Started properties of exponents - not the most thrilling unit, but sanity-maintaining. 

One Good Thing

I am SO ahead in CSP... I'm excited for what doors this opens for us.

D68, 69, 70

I was sick.  I still cannot believe I missed 3 days of school for being sick - that's not like me.

D67 - Back from break, ease back into it

AP CSA
I want students to get comfortable reading documentation and googling things they don't know (or want to learn).  I also had a potpourri of things I hadn't really covered yet - wrapper classes, for-each loops and different types of run-time errors students would encounter.

Unfortunately the Java Docs weren't great for these topics.  I ended up doing the googling for students and recommending that they read some sites. But some students were too inconvenienced by typing in the recommended links so they did some googling themselves, which was fine!

I also had a worksheet with Arrays and ArrayLists questions for students to think about.  The goal was to have a chill day to get back into the swing.  I think it worked out fine.

AP CSP
We were booted to the auditorium today.  Students were working on programming with code.org.  I really should plot out where students are going to land at the end of the code.org material.  I think we might have a lot of extra time.  I am thinking of making two different pathways, one for students who want to continue with code.org and another for students who want to do more processing.  I think I could make the processing group flipped with Daniel Shiftman's videos... more to come on that.

Concepts
Unfortunately the majority of students had work to do on their projects still.  I was concerned that it would be too distant for them to remember, but I would say the recall was about the same as usual.  I really need to figure out how to integrate more personal finance into this content to make it more real-world for them.

One Good Thing
I met with one of our SPED teachers who was super helpful!  I know they have so much on their plate, but having them as a resource is so valuable!

Day 66: Day before break

AP CSA
I handed back tests and we worked on re-learning a bit.  For the day before break, I wanted to put a bit of a bow on things.  I am switching to my re-learning being on codeHS which I think will be a good thing for students as well.  I should have made this a resource for students at the start of the year too... oh well.

AP CSP
Next year, I want to do the MadLib assignment before break.  I think students could do a great seasonal one and then send it to family/friends.  I should look into what I can do around registration time for projects they can share with their friends...

Concepts
Financial math was supposed to wrap up today.  A lot of students didn't finish in time, BUT I do think that they seem to engage a bit more with the content now.  I am really thinking that after the ACT, I should go all-in for financial-based math. 

One Good Thing
All the sugar.  That's what I got from students today.  It was delish. :)

D65: Guest Speakers

AP CSA and AP CSP
Today I had a mini-reunion of CSP students.  I am interested to see what students think tomorrow about how it went.  I asked students ahead of time if they wanted to have former students come in and they said yes.  But then people were SUPER quiet.  Maybe an hour is too much for Q&A.  I am going to meet with TJ to talk about how he does it.

Concepts of Advanced Algebra
We are working on our final project of our finance unit.  Last week Thursday Mike Kauls came to talk to students about how he uses the ideas we have used in class in his job.  It was interesting to see who connected to the ideas in class. We did do a QFT activity the day before Kauls came which I think helped a ton.

I will say that the financial math unit seems to get less push back from students.  They seem to get that this is real-world applications.  I would love to expand this further (I just need more time to do this... maybe next semester...)

I am still struggling to figure out how to get these students to prepare for the ACT.  I still think one of the best ways to prep for the ACT is to take the ACT.   But it seems like any significant portion of time spent on the ACT is wasted by students.  I have decided to put one ACT test into the performance category with students able to make up the wrong questions.  That seems to have the most traction so far.  It is certainly more of the "stick" rather than carrot approach.

One Good Thing
Honestly, it was great to see former students come back. 

Day 59: Unplugged Algorithms

Never miss a Monday - for a workout or a blog post.

CSA
Students were getting arrays faster than I thought they would.  The Practice It exercises were already more challenging than the labs I was going to have them do for our "Unit 14" so I decided to move up the test a bit.

Today we did an "unplugged" algorithms activity where students needed to "sort" glasses of water from empty to full.  It went pretty well.  Students came up with the selection sort algorithm and the insertion sort algorithm themselves.  In one class, bubble sort popped up as well.

I don't think I pushed this as far as I could have pushed it though.  I think next time I would make this an unplugged day where we start with the cups of water and then have students write out the code for the algorithm they developed.   Then perhaps ended with a worksheet having students trace through the Xth iteration of the algorithm.

CSP
We started back with programming on Friday.  Today, I had students start to make their multi-screen apps. I am trying something new where I only grade a specific bubble of each stage - usually the "project" stage.  Already, I am uneasy with it.  The bubbles allow for some repetition and guidance.  While SOME students don't need that, I think the majority do.  I am most certainly going to have all students do all bubbles for the variables lesson because it is SUCH a key idea.  I am thinking the norm should be "do all the stages", and for the 3-5 students who don't need it, they are the exception.

Concepts
I actually presented at TIES today so I didn't see this class, but they worked on an ACT test.

One Good Thing
I enjoyed presenting today at TIES today!  It reinforced why workshops are more valuable than conferences.  You just get a better community.  I saw a lot of people I knew in passing but didn't get to really dive deep into things with anyone.

D49-52: Back on the A train

This week we are back to the grind from Thanksgiving.  Admittedly the few weeks leading up to the break were rough, thus the lack of follow through but I am back on the A game, for the most part... 

CSA

On day 49I wanted to ease students back into CS.  We did a harkness problem up on the board about making a multiplication grid.  It required nested for loops which I never taught explicitly to students, but they acted like it was NBD.  

For the harkness problem, stopped the class at one point, asked them to identify who was furthest away from the person holding the marker, and then asked that person (the person farthest away) to be the scribe.  I noticed there were some people who were being left out a bit, this brought them literally to the center of the problem. 

On day 50 we started a set of labs.  Quiz on Day 52.  I am not giving re-takes on this quiz because we start arrays next which are so important that I don't want old material to take precedence.

CSP

On day XX we did the data visualizations exercise which I printed and collected from students.  On day YY we watched the human face of big data.  I think I might do it differently next year and have students respond to a thinking prompt after each section and then collect that.  This year some students didn't pay attention so I am giving them a quiz on the material and giving them the video to watch at home.  

Concepts

We started our financial math unit.  Twitter totally came through with a lot of great resources 

One Good Thing

I got drinks with another teacher after school today.  I find these one-on-one conversations with other teachers really wonderful.

D40 and D41: Introduction to Design a Digital Scene

AP CSA

Had two lab days.  I have made it my point to sit literally next to anyone who is struggling during this time.  Today a student who had CSP said we needed more creative outlets in CSA - and I agree with him.  I got some good news today that next semester may give me more time to plan out those creative outlets for CSA, which would be awesome. 

AP CSP

We had a guest speaker on day 40.  They did an "agile" activity which was great for students - the presentation itself was a little too low for students, but the activities were for sure a win. Today I introduced the Design a Digital Scene task. I'm a little nervous that I won't get the diversity of ideas as I have in the past... we will see what the final outcome looks like.

Concepts

We are still working our way through quadratics.  I am feeling the monotony start to set in for students (and myself).  So, tomorrow we will be playing trashketball.

One Good Thing

I had a student tell me "you should give yourself props for teaching a class with 40 students in it".  Yes, yes I should.

D40: Question Formulation Technique

AP CSA

Today we did two more loop problems Harkness style.  I gotta say, I LOVE this tool for teaching CS.  I have to make sure I don't over-use it, otherwise I think it will lose the novelty in class.  Right now, it encourages carefuly problem solving and allows students to make connections and collaborate.  It forces less guess-and-check which I think is important too.  #WIN

AP CSP

Tomorrow we have two guest speakers coming in.  I did a question formulation technique activity with students and I think it was helpful - tomorrow will be a good  test.  I also gave students who were further along some challenge problems for turtle programming.

Concepts

We did two desmos activities - the Marble Slides and a Quadratics Matching activity.  Marble Slides  is engagement gold.  I get concerned that there is too much guess-and-check for this point in the unit.  Careful problem solving is not a skill that comes naturally to this group, but I will say they are quite persistent!

One Good Thing

I've been really trying to stress the importance of team-ness in class.  I think it might be working - there are still some students who seem determined to dominate the conversations, but at least now I have it narrowed down to 3-5 students who I need to target more than others. 

One of my favorite analogies I used with my students was this: fold your arms.  Now, fold them the other way.  Students know it feels weird and uncomfortable - it's not wrong, but it feels not right.  I am asking them to take on a role that may feel uncomfortable.  I just want to acknowledge that it will feel awkward for some students, but that's ok.

D38 and 39: Harkness - Take 2!

Day 38: More of the same for everyone - lab time, programming, and problem sets.

Day 39...

AP CSA

This was one of those days that I did something different in every class, I saw pros and cons to each combiniation.  Here's what I would do next year.

I introduced while loops by having a student play an instance of a "HumanMachine" that could "takeOneStep".  Students had to write a for loop to get the student to walk to the door.  Students had different guess on how many steps it would take.  I had the student act it out and then we talked about how we had to guess the number of steps, and in reality it would be nice if we could just ask our volunteer to take steps until they simply got to the door.  Enter While Loops.

Ideally I would do this intro again next year, but before they watch the videos.  Students watched videos last night didn't need that set-up.

Then we went over the syntax and translated some of the M&M code into while loops (instead of for loops) to get the same result.  Next year, I think I would do 2 examples of this up on the board rather than print it out for students.  That wasn't necessary.

In one class I gave them time to do the homework which resulted in good conversations, but I wasn't sure if that was a good use of class time so I did some Harkness Style discussion problems.  Specifically we did a problem that asked them to write a method that would return the number of zeros in a number given in a parameter.  They could not turn it into a string.  That went really well.  The best thing I did with this was set expectations for the walk around.  I said each group needed to make one comment on every other group's work.  I gave examples of this:

• "I don't think this works because...?"
• "Would it be more efficient if...?"
• "Did you consider XX case...?"
• etc...

This really forced every group to make sense and question other students work.  Then they went back to their boards.  Students responded to the comments, either fixing their code or showing why the comment was incorrect.  It went really well!

Here are some images of what the board work looked like at the end of class.

These comments lead to a good discussion with the group after the gallery walk.

This one modeled style SO well!

I love these comments that the group wrote about what their program did.

AP CSP

Locking down each lesson has helped with pacing.  On Monday I am going to have a list of challenge problems for students who are ahead.  The concept of parameters is a little tricky for students, and I know the Harkness method COULD work but with 40 students it is tough to do that - I need 100 feet of whiteboard space...

Concepts

Quiz day!  I saw on Twitter that someone had students work independently, then work with a partner for 5 minutes and then finish independently.  We tried that and it helped.

One Good Thing

An Advanced Algebra teacher asked me to do Hour of Code in their class!  I am SO SO excited - that is the right group to recruit from since they will be Juniors and Seniors next year.  I am hoping this helps with enrollment, AND gets more students interested in code.