It is my understanding that my school wants me to teach this class in a way that is student self paced. I have an AP class of mostly freshman and sophomores. I have been trying to teach according to the way that is set up here in code.org but my students are behind. My admins here at school want me to let students move through the lessons at their own pace, which means kids are at all different points. How do I do this and still get at the social components and activity lead ins? This is supposed to be an AP class and we are set up as and AP class, but it feels like they want me to run it as an online class where I just babysit. I have no guidance on how to do this effectively, here at school. The former teachers of this course are all gone and I have no curriculum leader. I am feeling really frustrated and could use some help. Thank-you.
Oye, that’s a bit tough… but grouping up the students might be a good idea here. So they move together as a unit, but at pace comfortable for the group.
Exercises can vary quite a bit, but since there are a lot of activities are with pairs, maybe consider keeping the groups in even numbers of 4 or 6. As you pointed out, many of these exercises don’t work without a group. Some of the exercises only work with an entire class (see Unit 1 Lesson 12 Names and Addresses activity) but most should get by.
I’m interested to know if anyone else has done this. Seems like some of the exercises need to have additional context provided by the instructor before or after the exercise to really connect the dots.
Self-paced seems difficult to accomplish for some lessons. For example, many of the simulator activities rely on having a number of students on at the same time. I teach programing on a self-paced schedule but I can’t imagine teaching APCSP the same way.
I know there are teachers who have adapted the course for online, but I do not have access to any of their documents - hopefully they will post on it here!
I would maybe consider doing a hybrid of ¨move at your own pace¨ and ¨do things as a class¨. Can you do more of the unit 1 things in person, but most of unit 2-5 could be more independent if required. I personally would not want to do that but if your admin is requiring that, it might be the only way to go.
Do you feel comfortable asking for clarification from your admin? It seems like there is some miscommunciation that might be cleared up with a meeting.