I’ve been teaching AP CS-A for a few years, previously used CSAwesome and always assigned practice question in AP Classroom, which were aligned with the curriculum.
I’m enjoying Code.org’s CSA curriculum but haven’t been able to figure out how best to use AP Classroom. I tried to assign some questions that aligned with the Unit 1 learning objectives, but they generally included lots of other Java topics so I was afraid my students would freak out.
It might just be something that had to wait until later in the year. But curious if anyone has had luck finding questions that align well with Unit 1 but don’t contain much other prior knowledge.
Hi, I’m glad to hear that you are enjoying the CSA curriculum!
It sounds like you are aware of how to find out which standards align to the curriculum from the unit overview pages (For example unit 1’s is here) but are finding the AP questions that line up to unit 1 might be more challenging than what your students are ready for. I have found this to be the case for my students at this point of the year.
Much of what is introduced in unit 1 is a taste of topics that will be covered in more depth in later units. I am choosing to hold off on assigning AP questions during unit 1, and will start assigning resources from AP classroom during unit 2 when students have more in depth knowledge about how to write classes.
As others read this post, I’m interested in hearing how/ if others use AP classroom resources during unit 1 and in the first months of the year.
Unit 1 seems like a variety of topics. Hopefully the next units will group some major concepts together. I have never used a curriclum that starts with inheritance in the first unit, but I am open. Several lesssons in to to get to do a println.
@choster you are right! As a teacher, I avoided topic questions and progress checks in Unit 1 because Unit 1 covers a variety of topics that create a strong foundation for future learning but are difficult to align to the College Board. I found I needed to spend a lot of time picking out the perfcet questions in AP Classroom that it wasn’t worth it, personally, for my time.
That being said, I think you will find that future units are much easier to pick questions for. But please let us know how you end up using AP Classroom in your class too! We love hearing others’ ideas!
Hi! I know this is a post from last year but do you happen to have a list of AP Classroom questions you gave in unit 2-9? Or any videos you used on AP Classroom? If so, it would be so helpful!
Hi! I know this is a post from last year but do you happen to have a list of AP Classroom questions you gave in unit 2-9? Or any videos you used on AP Classroom? If so, it would be so helpful!
Hi Ashley,
I don’t have an organized list of what I assigned on AP classroom, unfortunately. I actually found that my assignments I created were quite unorganized and had a lot of overlapping questions from having created quizzes at different times over the course of a few school years. So I cleared out my old quizzes and am planning on using the personal progress checks listed in the course overview page as we go this year. The standards page, which is linked under the AP Classroom Progress checks for each unit, is also a good resource for creating AP classroom quizzes.
Hello CSA teachers,
I wanted to follow up on this thread about using AP classroom resources as we go through Code.org’s CSA curriculum. I like how Code uses an Object’s first approach, and spirals the content, but it does mean that we have to match up the AP classroom resources with our current content.
As I mentioned in the previous comment in the thread, I don’t use the AP classroom materials in unit 1, and I chose not to in unit 2 either this year. I am assigning the topic quizzes as we go through the content, and then am using the personal progress checks when we have covered all of the topics in the unit.
For example, during unit 3 for Code’s CSA unit on arrays, I assigned all of the AP classroom materials from college board’s unit 6. I assigned the topic quizzes during the unit as we had encountered the info related to each one, and the personal progress check to help review for the Unit 3 multiple choice test. It went well, and I think the extra multiple choice practice helped students to prepare for the test. I added a review day to go over the commonly missed questions on AP classroom before the test.
As we move into unit 4, and reviewing for the end of the semester, I have added more AP classroom practice into my plans. Some details about this:
I went in to each unit guide and found the unit at a glance on AP classroom and printed out the page that had the list of topics-- it was 3rd or 4th page for most of them. Here is what Unit 1’s looks like:
I am keeping track of each topic and personal progress check I assign on the papers I printed out. As I mentioned above, Code’s unit 3 matches closely with AP’s unit 6.
Before the end of the semester I plan on assigning the following topic quizzes from AP:
All of unit 1
Most of unit 2: skip 2.6, 2.7, and 2.8(those will be covered during Code’s unit 6)
All of unit 3
4.1 and 4.2
5.1 through 5.9
All of unit 6 was assigned during Code’s unit 3
While AP’s unit 9 has topics on inheritance we have covered, I am going to save them for second semester.
I am assigning one or two of these each day, and having students work on them at home and when we finish the day’s work early. I also have days planned to look back at the topic quizzes from that week. I’m not necessarily lining the quizzes up with what we are doing that day, I think it is good for students to have mixed review to keep their skills fresh.
One long post about how I use AP materials, I’d love to hear about how others utilize AP classroom!
Lindsay
