Teaching as a 9 Week Course

CS Discoveries Unit and Lesson Discussion
1

Hello! With all the changes to this coming school year, I will be teaching this class for the first time and as a 9 week course. Does anyone here do that? If so, what material do you cover to be the most effective?

Thanks in advance!

2

It kind of depends on what you want to emphasize. If it is a 9 week course with a typical 45 minute per day class (or something similar), you may only have time to cover around half the material.

I do something similar in one of my classes and I mostly teach them unit 3, however, it’s not ideal as I love the problem solving curriculum in unit 1 and I wish I had a few more weeks to cover all of that. I think the next time I teach for that short of a time period, I will probably teach several lessons from unit 1 and then the first half of unit 3.

If you prefer teaching web development, though, unit 2 is a great standalone unit as well. What I probably wouldn’t try to do is to cram all three units into 9 weeks. That would probably be confusing to students and not give them enough time to process what they are learning.

Just my 2 cents, but maybe others will jump in and share what they do.

Mike

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3

I teach this as a nine week course to 8th grade. Normally, I spend about a week going over problem solving process, what a computer is, and input and output. I then start unit 3. We normally get to about lesson 19 or 20. I think it covers most of the important ideas and they’ve basically gotten to all of the coding in unit 3.

4

I am also using this in my class for the first time! In my 7th and 8th grade classes, I have planned to work through Unit 1 in both, and then Unit 4 in seventh and Unit 3 in eighth. I thought it would be a cool experience to build the app as a seventh grader and design the game as an eighth grader! I am also teaching a sort of digital citizenship curriculum alongside code.org, so I’ve had to skip/shorten some of these lessons. I tried my best to only shorten lessons I think students may grasp quicker than others.

5

I teach this as a 9 week course as well. I am lucky enough to have my students in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. In 6th grade we cover Units 1 & 2. In 7th grade we cover Unit 3. In 8th grade we cover Unit 6.

6

This year I will be teaching CSD as a 12-week course, 3 times. The same course with different students each of our 3 trimesters.

I am thinking about doing one of the following. Any thoughts would be welcome on either idea.

Idea #1
Unit 1 - just under the 2 wk. recommendation
Unit 3 - keep under 9 weeks
Unit 6 - as much time as I can get in

-OR-

Idea #2 might be considered “crazy”, but it could work.

  • Unit 1 -> 1 or 2 weeks, Possibly Unit 4 for a brief Design Process overview
  • 2-3 days to look over Units 2, 3, 4 & 6
  • Students pick which ones they are interested in
    * They would be expected to pick two of the units to work on
    * I would expect them to finish at least 1 1/2 of the 2 units
  • I know - this one sounds crazy.
    * But it lets the students follow a topic they are more interested in.
    * I would probably ‘pair’ units to be taught at the same time, i.e./ 2 & 4, 3 & 6
7

Hello @rsmith1! Welcome back! We haven’t seen you in a while.
With respect to your scheduling options, I would personally lean toward the more conservative option due to the possibility of so many schools switching between online and in person throughout the school year. I really like Idea #2 a lot, but I’m wondering if it would be next to impossible to manage if your school year changes format throughout the year. Maybe you are in a more stable area and there is little concern about COVID - if that’s the case, then I say, shoot the moon and go for Idea #2.
Speaking from a purely curricular point of view, there would have to be parameters about which two units students chose together and in what order they were completed. For instance, a student could not choose Unit 2 & Unit 6. They would not have the necessary background knowledge to complete the activities in Unit 6 without first having some exposure to JavaScript in Unit 3. These are just some thoughts to consider. I hope you have a wonderful start to your school year.

8

I agree.
Idea #2 would be great (with given ‘expectations’), but especially scary for management in this time of unknown schedules changes.
I will probably keep it simple (at least for now) and go with Unit 1 -> 3 (possibly abridged) ->6 (as much as possible). I found Unit 6 to be the most fun. Students were able to hold the changes in their hands, not just the screen.
Maybe next year (if things calm down) I will try something like Idea #ecs:ecs-unit2
Thank you for your support.
Richard

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