Hello, I am teaching 6th grade this year, but only once a week. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to consolidate the CSD curriculum so that the students get the most out of it. I have roughly 35 weeks at 50 minutes each week. I am not opposed to giving them at-home tasks, but nothing that will take a long time to complete. I want them to enjoy this course, not dread homework from it. Any suggestions welcome! I want the students to benefit as much as they can from it. Thanks in advance!
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That’s a tough schedule. That works out to be about 7 weeks worth of face-to-face courses, right? I almost wonder if it would be worth your time to pare Unit1 way down to just the essentials (problem solving process & the input, storage, processing, output model) and some community building then focus on Unit 2 and the HTML & CSS side of things. Students get very excited about the “making” aspect of Unit 2 and might really be motivated to work even between your sessions.
Hi Jennifer,
Another option that you may want to consider is Code.org’s Express Course. This takes the best highlights of the CSF curriculum and condenses it to a 34-lesson course. Pace-wise, I think it’s a really good fit for 6th grade and get the students interacting with coding in some positive and creative ways. You could then reserve CSD for somewhere in grades 7-9. That may not be your goal or scenario, but I thought I’d put the idea on the table.
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I teach 6th, 7th and 8th grade and have my students once a week for 70 minutes.
I’ve broken down the course into covering about two units a year.
6th - Consolidated Unit 1, 2 and the beginning of three.
7th - End of 3 and 4
8th - 5 and 6
I agree that consolidating Unit 1 is a great way to gain back some lesson time. Once you get into the other Units it’s hard if not impossible to take out content and skip lessons.
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As long as students are getting the problem solving process and the input, storage, processing, output model they should be well-prepared for the following lessons. I would be careful to include some of the group work in order to help students build some community to facilitate the later partner programming.
Hi Christine - could you be more specific how you condensed unit 1? Thanks!
Kathie
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I am going into my first year of teaching CSD with 6-8th students as well. I was planning on doing the same thing 6th - Unit 1/2 , 7th - 3/4, and 8th-5,6.
Coding was supposed to begin the 2nd semester and see them each grade twice a week for 45 minutes. Do you think this will allow enough time to get through this pacing?
Any suggestions?
@kathie.froemming Unit 1 Lesson 2 and 3 can be combined together if you remove the third problem solving activity (Road Trip) from lesson 3. Also, the final project can be simplified and more examples given, as it is quite verbose. I’ve had students demonstrate their understanding with a simplified document and sketch of their app as if being seen in an app store instead of creating a large poster (time consuming!)
@mochoa From my experience, that should be enough time to complete the Units.