Hi
I will be teaching APCSP next semester. I will have students for 3 hours every day. Anyone have suggestions for pacing to make sure everything gets covered before the exam? Thanks.
Hi @terryfrady,
I’m not familiar with 3-hour periods so I’m not sure how I’d treat them differently from basically sticking 3 “normal” 1-hour periods together.
Will you have fewer instructional hours compared to a teaching CSP year-long on a normal schedule? From my understanding, you’re limited to 1 semester instead of two, so that cuts your time in half. Then, you’ll be missing 1-2 months depending on how early the AP exam is in your second semester. However, your class periods are also 3x as long as a typical class period.
If your instructional hours are about the same as someone teaching on a typical schedule, I think you’ll be able to get through the whole curriculum.
For reference, the multiple choice exam is on Friday May 15 8am, and the Performance Tasks are due Thursday, April 30, 11:59 PM ET.
Teaching this all in 2nd semester can be challenging due to the college board deadlines. I recommend looking at the timings on the “CS Principles Course At-A-Glance” page (page 2) of the curriculum guide. If you are doing about 2.5 - 3 weeks in a week you can see where you will be by April 30th and June 15th. Your goal should be to get through Unit 4 for the Explore PT and at least Chapter 1 of Unit 5 for the Create PT. Remember those 20 hours for the PTs. If you find you’re a bit short there are probably things you can trim. First step is to understand the scope of the problem if there is one.