'15-'16 General Discussion for Lesson 3.10

CS Principles Unit and Lesson Discussion
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1

Use this thread to discuss your questions and comments about how to run the lesson.

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This unit seems to be a lot more independent the rest of the year which is weird for me as a teacher - it seems very hands off but the students really like it. It is also a little challenging to pace since students progress at such different rates. I liked having this project in there a space for students to get aligned and work together. Students really enjoyed this project as well. I had one group who made a very detailed and complicated image of some cartoon which they were really excited about but from a programming perspective it was a bit boring since there weren’t any loops or random behavior in it.

I am actually hoping to have more days/projects like this in class as a mini-check point for students in this programming unit.

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Also, some of my students found the “remix” area which I am not sure if that was intentionally revealed this early or not.

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At the last PD we looked at sample solutions and graded them using the rubric. Does anyone know where I can find those sample projects?
Thanks

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Hey Jessica

Exemplars exist for teachers for many of the levels and you can always find them in the teacher answer viewer. Here is a demo of how to find the ones for the Design a Digital Scene Project.

findingExemplars.gif1420×671 1.19 MB

-Dani

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Dani,
When I clicked on the link in the lesson plan to view the Cumulative Assessment for Unit 3 Stages 1-8 with a key the link brought me to Unit 3 Stage 8. Is the link correct?

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hey, dillon!

that’s right. these assessments have just been added, and haven’t pushed to our production site yet. in a couple of days they’ll be live and you’ll be able to see them in on stage 8, level 1 in the teacher only section (it will look like this:)

Screen Shot 2016-02-05 at 9.03.53 AM.png748×129 20.3 KB

-brook

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In the written portion, there is a question that asks the student to…
Describe the most difficult programming problem you encountered while writing your individual code. What was the difficulty? Explain how you resolved it.

I had one student ask me “What if I didn’t have any difficulties?” I’m also right now looking at a written response that says that “I had no problems” because “mine was pretty simple… a big blue circle.”

My question is… how do we respond to this situation in which the student does not see any difficulties in the work they did? I’m assuming this is a somewhat general question that can come up in the AP for any task (and a fair question, in my opinion).

Some of my own thoughts so far…

  1. It’s possible there really were no difficulties, as some group members took on a very simple task, such as drawing a single circle in a fixed location on the screen (supposedly the planet Neptune). Solution?: “Maybe you should’ve challenged yourself more” ???
  2. It’s possible the student did run across some difficulties but they did not recognize it as such, did not remember it happening, or are uncomfortable expressing that they found it difficult to do something.
  3. For the student who asked me in person, I first probed to see if she did come across difficulties but was just having trouble identifying it. It came down to me incredulously asking “so for your part of the code, you literally sat down and put it together in a single try, you hit ‘run’, and it worked exactly as you wanted to?” The student replied, “Yeah.” (Her code was to place random yellow dots as stars.) I don’t know if that’s actually what happened, but she acted as if that’s truly what she believed. At this point I wasn’t sure whether to pursue having her dig deeper into finding a difficulty, but she seemed to have such absolute conviction that there was no difficulty, so I switched routes and tried to address what she should do to “get points for the question” even if she had no difficulty. It felt dirty, but I also explained it in the context that in life there are hoops you have to jump through and that itself is a skill to be learned. I said in order for her to come up with something, could she think of something other students might have had difficulty with? She thought for a bit. “… nope.” I let out a disappointing sigh (mentally) and pointed out to her parts of her code I can see other students making mistakes in. “Oh… okay. Thanks.”

:o\

Thoughts?

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Frank,
Sounds like the student could be avoiding work. You gave good prompts. Without knowing the student I doubt the student perfectly coded she was responsible for perfectly the first time. Maybe you can have her answer the question about a situation in an earlier stage where she encountered difficulty?

Dillon

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Thanks for the heads up. I’m going to try to head this off at the pass with the following slide on Day 2

Review the reflection questions!
b. Describe the most difficult programming problem you encountered while writing your individual code. What was the difficulty? Explain how you resolved it.

If you don’t have any difficulties you didn’t take on a hard enough task and you will not get a good grade. (or pass the real PT)

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hahah I like it.

Apparently my post has to be at least 20 characters. Probably to avoid someone from posting trivial responses like this one.

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For the assessment question 2 with the robot. I understand how b is the correct drawing but i don’t think the arrow is drawn correctly. It states in the problem that the arrow is initially facing towards the right of the grid. The solution answer b has the arrow facing upward at the end and since there is no dotted triangle, that means it also begins there. I interpreted the code as it would start at the top left of the bottom left square facing right and would also end up there

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Hi @bbinkley,

I don’t see where the question says that the arrow was initially facing right. It looks like it says the arrows initially face whatever direction is indicated by the dotted triangle unless they had the same ending position. Can you point me to what you are seeing?

Thanks!

Dani

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Hi dani ,

I really can’t see any examples when I press the arrow as the video ,only my name as a student .I really don’t know what’s wrong??

Screen Shot 2016-08-12 at 1.37.36 PM.png516×1354 32 KB

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Hi @mayadamagdy3,

It looks like you might have a student account.

To change your account to a teacher account

  1. Click on your name in orange in the upper right corner
  2. Click my account.
  3. Scroll down to where is says “Are you a student or a teacher?” and check that the drop down below says teacher.
  4. Click Update.

Once you have a teacher account you will then need to submit for approval to get the locked down teacher materials.

You can do that here.

Let me know if that doesn’t work.

Dani

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Thanks ,I sent it and waiting for approval

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Hi Dani ,I did everything and still don’t have access to the teacher account ??

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HI @mayadamagdy3,

Did you get an email saying they gave you access to the locked down teacher materials? It takes a couple days to process those requests so once you get an email you should test it out then.

-Dani

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Is there a “student work sample” somewhere? I’d like to have my students evaluate a sample so they can get a better idea of how they can assess their own project using the rubric.

I remember during the in-person workshop, we were given a sample that was a beach scene with waves, sand, and palm trees. Lost the link to it though…