Hello,
I have been teaching AP Computer Science Principles for 4 years now. I primarily use code.org’s curriculum with a few other supplementary activities throughout the year. I will be out for January, February and some of March 2024 for maternity leave. Typically, this is when I would teach the Lists, Loops and Traversals Unit, the Algorithm Unit and the Parameters and Libraries unit. I am considering reorganizing the order I teach the units to frontload all the coding and save some of the other units for students to learn when I am out. Recommendations on keeping the units in the order they are currently in or teaching them in this order: 1, 3, 4, 5 and hopefully 7 before I am out and having students work independently through units 2, 6, and 9 when I am gone. I would have them do the Create project as soon as I get back and end the year with unit 10.
Thank you!
Tracy
Hi Tracy,
I did almost exactly this when I was out on maternity leave (My daughter was born November 30th). I didn’t make it through U7 before December, but I think you could probably make it work. I feel like I often review a lot of U2 before the exam anyway, so perhaps it will be easier to remember before the AP!
The down side of this is that students haven’t been “off” from programming for a few units before stepping in to the create task, which means they may be a little rusty. Its helpful to have explicit practice (AP Classroom, small coding challenges) that they can do throughout your leave so that they feel confident going in to the PT.
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Thank you, that’s really helpful! I typically have them work on some Snap coding projects in the beginning of the year before we get into the heavy coding on code.org so I will just shift those to when I am out so they can practice. I appreciate the feedback!