My students are loving Unit 3. My classroom is alive with great discussion and problem solving. I’ve seen a few students just “Take off” in this unit and they are doing some awesome stuff. In the last few weeks 4 of my students have asked me to sign off on them taking computer science at the high school. Very exciting times. I am so excited to see what they do to finish the school year. To give you a frame of reference my class is anywhere from Chapter 1 Lesson 4 to Lesson 6. No glitches thus far!!!
I have a student who has missed 47 days of school for 2nd semester. Once we started Unit 3 about 10 days ago, he hasn’t missed a day of school. He wants to come to school so he can do our CS class. I love it! Truancy has been a problem for this student due to extreme anxiety. Dad tells me he’s a totally different kid the last 2 weeks. I pray he has found his niche with CS and will pursue in High School.
Title 1 school; grade 6, 50/50 female/male; students new to CS
Unit 3 is going well so far. The students need reminders and guidance to use the maps strategically as that will help them debug. I’ve been doing daily recaps with simple class discussions/check-ins with different questions/prompts such as, “Tell me the coolest thing you learned to do/did today in game lab” or “What do you want to be able to do in game lab?” or “What would you ask a game lab expert?”
One thing I just thought of in this lesson when we came to this task:
“You’re going to start creating a scene of your own. If you haven’t already, take a minute to sketch out a picture of your scene (consider using graph paper). Once you have an idea and plan for your scene, start drawing the background.”
I’ve also been keeping track on a daily basis of new commands they’ve learned and kept a running list, sort of in the same principle as a word wall or anchor chart. This has helped to track our collective progress and helps my students to think about how they can combine what they know how to do and think about programming in a more holistic way rather than as discrete components.
I was thinking it would be neat to have a reproducible graph paper template that corresponds to the grid in Code.org that is online for the students to draw their scene. This could maybe be an ‘optional’ support for teachers who are looking for additional scaffolds for students who have difficulty visualizing or placing objects or determining the coordinates. This could also be an unplugged support that could be used from the earlier lessons that have to do with placing/relocating sprites on the grid.
Hey @mak these are some really helpful insights. We’re about to publish some changes to Unit 3 Lesson 2 that may include the graph resource you’re thinking about so keep an eye out for that. I really like the way you’re keeping the story of the unit together with recaps and check-ins, and the anchor chart for commands sounds like another helpful resource. Especially after kids kept track of the tags and properties they learned in Unit 2 I can see this being a good direction to move in Unit 3. Keep letting us know how things go, and if you have some projects to share after kids are done with Lesson 6 we’d love to see them.
Notes:
11 students, 9-12th Grades with little experience in CS.
U3L06 - Sprites
This was a good introductory lesson - just students struggled with the sequence of events to define a sprite, set an animation, and then “drawSprites()” to screen. I think this is a good problem for students to work through because they need to look at EXACTLY what they are telling the computer to do.
With the “drawSprites()” issue in mind, I would emphasize that next time - but with my small class over half got it right away and I was able to answer questions to students that struggled - but in a good way because it was just a good reminder of what you are asking the computer to do.