I am anxious to try this as an enrichment program for my 6th grade students.
The summer program was a great learning experience. I feel, though, that I couldve benefitted more in a “slower” paced environment. There were other teachers flying through the program (understandably so…they understood the material) and I had difficulty keeping up.
The second phase helped me to review my skills but, I still struggle with understanding.
I know my students will enjoy the hour of code programs and understand the concept as it is very child friendly.
I don’t feel comfortable (at this time) teaching something that I am unsure of myself.
I would like to see groups split in the future according to the varying levels of instruction. A 6th grade math teacher should have a different level than an eleventh grade Algebra 2 teacher.
I am not entirely sure how I will implement Algebra CS… I feel like a novice myself and would like to have better understanding before I completely use this in my courses. I have however enrolled some of my over achieving students into the course. Hoping I can learn more as they learn.
I am comfortable with letting students be the “drivers” and not leading them to answers and taking away the challenge for them. I need to learn as much about CS as I can because it is not my background. I think making sure my students get workbooks would be the most helpful- those workbooks were very helpful for me in mapping things out and using the design recipe.
I understand the design recipe and how wonderful and applicable (to other things) it actually is. However, I struggled a good bit to get through some of the programming. I tend to overcomplicate things. I wish the PD online (without support) had a few more helpful hints as we mess things up and try to solve the puzzles. On one puzzle which took me forever, I was informed I had unattached blocks, and I couldn’t find them, so I ended up starting over multiple times. Also, the “see the solution” was not helpful at all. I couldn’t open any of the blocks. I also had problems with things going haywire (weird scrolling problems, where I couldn’t work within the work space and attach things). I don’t think these were my computer problems because I would go out of the CODE website, and things seemed to work fine. Face-to-face PD is so much more preferable … I need the assistance. I do feel I got a lot from the 3 days we worked together face-to-face.
I can see the program serving as a motivator for the students that I will have this year. I have to practice what I preach and remind myself that its okay to make mistakes and to be persistent. I love a challenge. I hope my students will become better problem solvers and gain interest in coding.
I feel very comfortable with the Code.org tools and am very excited to try the different strategies and having the students get a deeper meaning of algebra and coding.
The summer course was great and this follow-up reviewed concepts used, which really helped. I love the design contract. I still need more help/practice with conditionals.
Using the system I am comfortable with. Having to rigidly following the design contracts would be challenging for me since I didn’t learn programming that way. I need to keep it up because I do see how it’d help students think and design their codes.
I think I have made a lot of progress,however am hoping after this Saturday’s PD, I am a at place where I feel comfortable implementing this in my classroom. I feel like in order to teach, I have to have mastered the material, and I just don’t feel like I am there yet. Coding is a whole new world to me, and at times, the training has been overwhelming. I need a little more confidence before I am there!
I am excited to embark on the adventure and challenges of learning coding/computer science with my eighth grade students. There is a lot to learn from the program and from each other in the class. I look forward to students being engaged and working together with their peers to take on a problem and find a solution. The best is when they have reached a solution and yelp a cheer in the class. You know you are doing something right. The more practice I get with my students with the curriculum, the more comfortable I will be with the content. I feel that a facilitator coming to our school weekly to support me and other teachers teaching the Code.org courses would be very meaningful.
I joined the party late and did not attend the summer PD. I hope to do so this coming summer.
This class was a great experience. I would, however, have liked to have more hard copy resources.