I’m working on planning the rest of the semester for my 6th grade students. We have already completed Unit 1 Problem Solving. We are currently in Week 5 of our classes and this week we are doing lessons Unit 2 Ch1 Web Development Lessons 6 and 7. We skipped lesson 4 (mini project - I didn’t feel like they were ready yet; I wanted to reinforce more code.) I had planned on skipping Ch 2 of Web Development so we could get more stuff covered. I’ve started the prepping for our Unit 3 Interactive Animations and Games. I notice that there are a TON of lessons. I’ve prepped through lesson 5 so far. I know my students are very anxious to “build games” in Chapter 2. However, I also wanted to touch on Unit 6A - Creating Apps With Devices (Circuit Playground). I know if I try to cover all of Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 in Unit 3, I won’t get to the Circuit Playground with my constraints of 1 semester. What do you suggest I do? I wasn’t sure how much of Chapter 1 had to be completed in Unit 3 to be able to do Chapter 2 in Unit 3. I hope this all makes sense. I’m just trying to touch as many things as possible in these above-mentioned Units. Thanks so much for the help!
If I followed everything correctly, you want to skip ahead to chapter two of unit three so students can still create games and fit in parts of unit six? Generally speaking, teachers can easily skip chapter two of a unit, but it is not recommended that you skip chapter one to get to two. The skills taught in the first chapter are really necessary for success in chapter two. This is especially true of unit 3. You could get away with just teaching unit 3 chapter 1 then go to unit 6. There are parts of unit 3 chapter 1 that need to be covered before getting into unit 6 anyhow. I know students want to create games, but they’ll really need to complete chapter 1 before getting into chapter 2 in unit 3. The learning curve is just too steep otherwise, especially for 6th graders.
Just this summer, code.org revised the progression a little and also put more problem solving into each unit and then created collections of lessons that go together well depending on what your want to focus on.
One of them is called “Focus on Coding” and it includes web development, game development and app development which would appear to fit your situation.
You can learn more about the collections here and the focus that may fit your needs can be found here (and assigned directly to students with the new course assignment possibilities).
Hope this helps!
Mike