Pacing and Extra Supports

CS Principles Unit and Lesson Discussion
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This is my third year teaching AP CSP and therefore my third time completing the Digital Scene Project.

This year it went better then ever because I added a couple of extra supports. And extended the timing - from the recommended three days to six days.

I share my resources here in case they can help anyone else be more successful with this project.

Design a Digital Scene – Project Overview

  • Six class days to complete this part of the project

        • Progress Tracker [25 pts]
          • Task #1 – Group Planning (1/2 Day)
          • Task #2 – Individual Components (1 1/2 Days)
          • Task #3 – Putting It Together (2 Days)
        • Written Responses [15 pts]
            • Task #4 – Written Responses (2 Days)
              • For 2d
                • What is Abstraction in Coding? – Article
                • Example – Code
              • For 3
                • Copy code into CodePrint, draw a rectangle around the abstraction, and then print/save that as a PDF

  • Work Space on Code.org

    • Individual Work Space – link
    • Design Your Digital Scene – link

  • Student Samples

    • Padlet – [2018/19] 3rd Period – link
    • Padlet – [2018/19] 10th Period – link
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Thanks, ,@jhall9!

It’s always great when teachers share their resources! :grinning:

Frank

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This is my first year teaching AP CSP and appreciate you sharing this information!
This information is going to help tremendously!

Much appreciated,

LuAnn

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Thanks for the message! I’ve been documenting my lessons on my class website https://mrshallapcsp.wordpress.com/ap-csp-lesson-archives/. If nothing else, I often put a few students examples on the page. It’s so helpful to show students model projects to spark ideas.

For the design a digital scene it is key that students remember the turtle won’t always start in the center of the screen, facing up. I urged their individual code to include a turnto() and moveto() as the first few lines of code. I’ve had too many frustrated students who have upside down trees or slanted flowers when they put the codes together.

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But those make for good points in the development process when doing the AP Prompts!

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I always go back and forth in trying to “warn” students about the “turn to” and “move to” commands. I choose not to warn them this year and let it be a learning experience for them. I figure it will be a good a-ha moment for them!

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@ gjschmidt @ kaitie_obryan
You make good points about letting the students figure out the importance of turnTo and moveTo. Last year, the issue with turtle placement frustrated my students to the point of them being angry with the project, and I wanted to avoid that this year.

Even though I reminded them about the starting turtle placement - several students forgot to include it in their individual component. And even if they did account for the random turtle placement several groups still had lingering issues with penUp, penWidth, and penRGB.