Can I skip Unit 1 Lesson 2 and 3 for Comp Sci Principles?

CS Principles Unit and Lesson Discussion
1

I’m looking at my school calendar and there isn’t enough time to go through all this material. Unit 1 Lessons 2 and 3 seem to be prepping kids for the binary numbers. I feel like I can just jump straight into binary numbers. Any advice?

2

You are right that it is prepping them for thinking about binary. My gut reaction is to caution against skipping them for the other things that they teach:

  • For students who have not taken a CS, this is a soft introduction to writing algorithms and abstracting ideas. Taking a “real world thing” and turning it in to something that can be computed is a skill, and one that isn’t really taught in other subjects. These lessons help build that foundation for future lessons.
  • Collaboration/community. This feels like a “go slow to go fast” moment. If you invest in the hands on learning and spirit of collaboration that is built through these tasks you can leverage it later in the year if they feel like they’re out of their depth.
  • Binary is a “gate keeper” topic for a lot of people entering CS. There’s stereotypes surrounding it, and kids who don’t get it at the beginning of the year can feel like they really don’t belong - or are not going to ever be able to succeed in the class. These building blocks create a pathway to binary that challenges this stigma and invites others to participate.

If I were trying to optimize days, I’d see if I could add the overflow lesson big ideas to the binary lesson (merge 4 and 5). I think the beats Lesson 10 and 11 can be hit on a quicker time scale too so perhaps merge them?
All of that said - you know your kids best. If they’ve learned binary before, or have taken some sort of STEM innovation class previously, maybe they already have the background knowledge to skip it. We never have time for everything we want to do. Its definitely hard to figure out the right pathway to the end of the year!

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4

Thanks for the input! I really appreciate it. I ended up skipping the lesson. I changed the warm up and edited the slides so that it included some information from the previous lessons. The lesson went well!

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5

Agreed that Lesson 2 and 3 are prepping students for thinking about binary and a soft introduction to writing algorithms and abstracting ideas. It’s taking a “real world thing” but here’s a thought. You could assign lesson 1 as pre-reading and discuss as class warmup then combine lessons 2 and 3 as class activities.