I was just on a podcast with Brook and Baker and said I’d share my digital journal in the forum, so here it is! I use the journal for a few different reasons:
Students come in to class and know what they have to do get started/get their mind back on the topic.
Students practice writing using academic vocabulary/sentence structures for the PTs.
It gives me a view of what the students are up to because I can check on a (somewhat) random set of journals every few days to make sure they understand content.
The template I made and shared with my students (via doctopus) is available here.
If you’re intersted in my journal questions, feel free to check out my slides for each lesson.
Each unit, students start a new journal document (mostly because it makes grading easier in my LMS, but I think it would probably be more useful to have the journal run throughout the whole school year).
I do! Sort of. I’m creating slides as I go depending on how far we get in the previous class periods. So far, I’m up to U2L05. This weekend I will also be completing drafts of Unit 2, though I’ll likely revise it before the day. You can find them here.
I’ave also started a class webpage (beginning Unit 2) available here: bit.ly/msBurton
Awesome, thanks for sharing. I am a few days ahead of you, but I will definitely use these ahead of time. I’ve found that I am using GAFE for some activity guides and Code.org on-line questions, so my students get confused and miss some assignments here and there. I like your idea of providing slides for visual learners
Hey Damara,
My school uses Cog Skills (Cognitive Skills) as our grading rubric for ALL courses. They were originally created by Stanford and Summit Academy in CA after doing some research on the skills that students need after they graduate from high school. Having a school wide rubric is great in some ways, but can also get frustrating when none of the columns in the rubric relate to the information I want to grade. The extended rubric (over 30 cog skills) is available here if you’re interested in checking it out.
These slides are amazing. I’m just trying to learn this curriculum this year, and may be teaching it next year.
Did you make those slides or are they available on code.org somewhere?
I love the digital journal and the specificity you have in telling them how they should write their response.
Thx so much for sharing.
@reillys Glad you like them! No, they are not code.org’s slides… just material I have put together.
@cmeeksI’m not sure what my plan is for unit 4 and 5 yet. I run a very non-traditional classroom with cohorts of students at different levels. (AP CSP, CSP, and Intro all in the same room at the same twice a week, and just the AP students twice a week.) For unit 4, I’m planning to spend the AP days teaching/working with the AP cohort so that they can teach the material to their peers in the full group. I want to build the materials with them, so I wasn’t planning to pre-create slides. If I hear that they’re useful for others though, I would be happy to make them for you folks!
I’m also planning to do U5 much like I did U3 - I gave students a self-directed learning plan for them to work with, and they filled out a google form after they completed each ‘stage’ in code studio. I worked with the first student to teach them material for each stage, then they graduated to become peer-tutors. Everyone entering that stage had to go talk to a peer tutor before they were able to begin on the Code Studio. Concurrently, I have a small group table in the back of my room, and students could opt in to short lessons - I ran 2 or 3 each day on functions, loops, abstraction, etc. (Students were also asked to join me if they were getting behind in their self directed work.) This worked really well, but I didn’t ever use slides for the small group lessons, and I don’t know that I plan to for the programming lessons in U5 either. Again… if they’d be helpful, I’d be happy to put them together!
I’m half way through Unit 4 with my AP class so don’t create the slides just for me…
I am however super interested in your process for Unit 3. Mid Jan I will start a non-AP, semester long. block intro class for 11th/12 graders. I plan to use primarily Units 3 & 5 (and optimistically 7). I’m interested in strategies for making it more self-paced and directed.
Thanks!
Caroline
(PS Do we want to move this discussion to another thread?)
Hi @madeline_r_burton -
That is quite the crazy class you have. How long as your periods that you only see the non-AP kids twice a week?
I have the same question as @cmeeks. Could you share your process - specifically the google doc they complete as they finish each stage. I don’t have a good vision for how to run the class for Units 3 and 5 when kids will be widely different places. The optional mini-lessons seem like a great idea, also the peer experts.
Does anyone else out here use peer experts?
Your Slides thus far (Unit 2 lesson 11) and (Tell a Data Story) have helped me so much! Thank you.
I didn’t see slides for Unit 2 lessons 13 and 14. Do you have those available? I read in this post that you will not be doing more slides. They are very useful and would LOVE it if you continued. I feel lost without them. So, if you are going to create them, please include me in the post!
Sincerely,
Damara
Thanks for the heads up Damara! I’ll work on putting together slides for Unit 3 as well. What lessons are you teaching currently?
I don’t have anything for U2L13 and L14. We had a power outage for the day and I ended up skipping the lesson all together! Ugh, it was poor timing, but I think they’ll be okay. For the final project in the unit, I didn’t end up using the personal data (because they didn’t get to clean it). Instead I went back to the data from the previous lessons. My U2 Project Presentation Slides are available here. It mostly walks students through the parts of the project and makes the rubric super clear. (My rubric, not Code.org’s.) I gave them access to the slide show and had them open it in a second tab on their computer so they had access to it whenever they were working.