Share your student work!

Now that your first year teaching CS in Algebra is coming to an end, let’s celebrate our successes by sharing student work. Find 3-5 (or more) student programs to share here on the forum. For each student program provide a link and a brief description of why this is a particularly interesting program (is it from a traditionally struggling student? Does it represent a unique approach to solving a problem?).

Once you’ve posted your student programs, take a moment to read over those from your peers and comment.

My students already completed the program but didn’t really delve too deeply into anything to share. I hope to be able to do more sharing next year.

I have divided the class into four sections and each will be responsible for 5 stages.
They are now putting together a 45 minute presentation to the principal. If all goes well they may present to some of the 7th graders to get them excited about doing it next year.
We will be producing a video of the presentation so when it is ready I will post it here.

As class begins I do a whole group lesson with students introducing them on a specific skill we are working on within today’s lesson. I have student leaders in my class that are stages ahead of their peers. I pull them into a small group at my desk and train them on the questions that I suspect my students will have today or could have with the upcoming lesson. The class knows they can go to any of the these students when they need help. I have trained these students to ask questions rather than solve the problem that their peers have.

Here are a couple of remixes that a struggling student completed after gaining supreme confidence when being successful in computer science. This success has turned this student around in his other academic classes.


For stage 11 solving word problems with the design recipe, I provided students with a variety of options for students to apply to a solve for a specific polygon, create a polygon, or to solve for a scenario. Students first worked on paper with the design recipe. They then applied the design recipe into the “draw something” or “calculate something” app to replicate that problem. The ability of my students to transfer skills from real world application to the CS in Algebra program greatly improved with this group in comparison to the students I had the first semester.

I will be sharing some of my students fun ideas. They may not be real elaborate, but they had a good time:-)



Thanks,
Steve

Here are some of my students work. they had a great time with this program and I hope to expand it next year.


Sorry. this program only allowed me to post two links… Here is my third.

At the end of Stage 3 - Strings and Images is a free play. I challenge all my students to make a “cool” picture. They aren’t allowed to move to the next stage until they show me a complicated image. Usually students just use overlays and different shapes. A couple students took it upon themselves to use the offset blocks as well to create actual pictures!
Here’s a bored face - https://studio.code.org/c/196932598
Here’s Deadpool - https://studio.code.org/c/223528495

Later, during Stage 10 - Rocket Height, I show a data table of the speed and distance of a free falling object (no air resistance) and have the students create a rocket that accelerates at the same rate. So they have to use the data table and distance formula and edit their rocket function to match.
Here’s the data table - https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/Images/mofall.gif
And here’s a working function - https://studio.code.org/c/223531478

I only have two links, but they’re pretty cool. At our last PD (the CS in Algebra on in Downey), the facilitator (I forget his name, but he’s from Florida) suggested having students create international flags in the free play area. It was a great activity. Even though many of the students picked really easy flags, it was still valuable for them to think through the process.

I did, however, have a couple of students who took it to another level…

The Union Jack:

The US Flag!!!


**Check out the code on this one… It’s pretty incredible how much work this kid put into this! I was amazed!

We didn’t do a whole lot in the free play section of Code.

I think as we went through the program the favorite was the evaluation blocks. Quite a few of the kids put in things to try to “block” the program. They were thrilled when they were able to come up with some crazy outcome. From there they would set out to create algorithms that had a predetermined answer, or to see how things changed from input to input with just a slight variation in the numbers being used. They had a good time. They were having FUN with math–some of which haven’t seen math as fun before this.1

Problems with the Big Game

This student could not finish the Big Game as the evaluation blocks were black and it would not allow her to make changes. This was very disappointing and frustrating for this student as she was a whiz in coding.

Big Game

This student was very successful in coding. This was his favorite assignment because he had to work hard and enjoyed having variables and objects to work with.

Sam the Bat

This student found this assignment to be user friendly. It was easy for them to change/update the variables.

Sam the Bat

This student also found Sam the Bat to be a user friendly assignment. It gave them the confidence needed to tackle the harder assignments.

My students had the most fun in the freeplay area using the drawing tools.

Here are a few products:



Especially on the first example where letter writing was concerned, the students learned a lot about planning and consistency in the creation of each component.

Those flags are incredible! It would be pretty easy to create a list of flags at Level A, B, and C based on complexity in order to give students differentiated assignments based on their level of understanding and mastery of the programming concepts.

Below are two groups who completed creating their game and had extra time to go back and play around with it. They also helped others in their class:


This is one of my groups that struggled with Luigi’s pizza and finally got it and were very proud of themselves :slight_smile:

Here are 4 artifacts from my students.

https://studio.code.org/projects/algebra_game/7-G0qh6h-KhC9Am5zcQDPA This is from the Update Player section in Stage 18.

https://studio.code.org/projects/eval/7YJeRo_C4S9RhTVCUise2g From Luigi’s Pizza Free Play (middle of stage 18)

https://studio.code.org/projects/algebra_game/lUoI26VIVc5g1XMrtC7qOg Distance Function in stage 20

https://studio.code.org/projects/algebra_game/eyUrCUM4rDdVfCAedAV_Ag Final Game