Day 1
01 Welcome 02 Model Lesson 03 Pause 04 Reflection 05 Equity 06 Wrap Up
Day 2
07 Welcome 08 Summary of Curriculum Investigation 09 Pause 10 Unit Planning 11 Wrap Up

Session 10: Unit Planning

45 minutes

discussion-based

Purpose

This session provides an opportunity to look at Unit 4 as a whole and focus on key areas to begin planning its implementation. Participants engage in reading and discussing scenarios to collaboratively identify challenges and strategies for proactive planning around group work, differentiation, and assessment.

Objectives

  • Participants are able to access and use supporting project resources in order to communicate clear project expectations to students
  • Participants have articulated a clear plan for how they will support students during group projects (grouping, timelines, check in points, student presentations, managing challenging group dynamics, assessment, peer feedback, etc.)
  • Participants have identified when and how they will utilize teaching and learning strategies

Supplies & Prep

Workshop Modality:

  • Whole Group
  • Individual

Facilitator Supplies:

Teacher Supplies:

Agenda

Unit Planning (33 minutes)

Other Considerations (12 minutes)

Facilitation Guide

Unit Planning (33 minutes)

(1 minute) Context Setting

Remarks

Unit 4 provides students with multiple opportunities for collaboration, working with the Problem Solving Process, and strengthening communication skills. In this session, we will discuss a few scenarios to help us think ahead about challenges and potential solutions in implementing Unit 4. We want to prepare to empower our students in managing their own learning and progress as they work in teams. The goal of the session is to focus on assessment, differentiation, and groupings to support students in working on both short and long-term projects in Unit 4. We will begin the session by looking at some examples of resources included in Unit 4, followed up by a discussion around a scenario. We will conclude the session with additional considerations as we prepare.

(7 minutes) Review Resources

Participants take five minutes to take a look at an example of a project guide and reflection included in Unit 4.

  • Chapter 1, Lesson 2: Understanding Your User - Activity Guide
  • Chapter 1, Lesson 8: Project - Paper Prototype - Project Guide
  • Chapter 1, Lesson 8: Project - Paper Prototype - Rubric
  • Chapter 1, Lesson 8: Project - Paper Prototype - Student Checklist
  • Chapter 2, Lesson 21: Project - App Presentation - Exemplar

(2 minutes) Whole group share out

  • Prompt: How can the resources provided support individual assessment?

  • Facilitator Note: In addition to the project guide and reflection, other supporting project resources include activity guides, rubric, and project exemplar.

(13 minutes) Assessment Scenarios

(9 minutes) Assessment Scenarios: Breakout Rooms

  • Participants read and discuss the scenarios and prompts assigned to breakout rooms.

  • Assessment Scenarios:

    • Breakout Rooms #1 and #4: Three out of four students in a group are frequently talking off topic, while one student is usually quietly drawing or writing on behalf of the group. When you randomly call on one of the “off-topic” students in the group to check for understanding, that student answers correctly.

    • Breakout Rooms #2 and #5: When a group presents their paper prototype, there are gaps within the presentation. When you question the group about this, they do not respond. Later, a student privately shares with you that one of the team members did not complete what they were supposed to.

    • Breakout Rooms #3 and #6: A team disagrees with the feedback given by another team and does not incorporate any changes nor revises their project.

  • Discussion Prompts:

    • How would you initially address the scenario you chose?
    • How would you address the scenario you chose while maintaining an inclusive classroom culture?

  • Producer Instructions: Send participants to breakout rooms and bring them back to the main room after 8 minutes for the Whole Group Discussion that follows.

    • Transition to Breakout Rooms

    • Circulate Breakout Rooms

(4 minutes) Whole Group Discussion

  • Participants return to the main room from breakout rooms.

Discussion Goal

The goal is to identify how resources may be used for individual assessment. You may need to guide the discussion towards an understanding of what information individual assessment provides and why it is important:

  • Identifies the student’s role in the project
  • Identifies the student’s understandings and skills as they work towards learning outcomes
  • Supports the student in making progress and being actively involved in their own learning
  • Provides feedback on the student’s performance
  • Measures the student’s growth

Prompts:

  • How will you assess individual learning during group work?
  • What learning strategies will support individual assessment?

Facilitator Note: Remind participants that the curriculum guide refers to the following teaching and learning strategies for Unit 4:

  • Think-Pair-Share - whenever given a prompt, consider using this strategy to support students learning from each other
  • Journaling - throughout the unit, usually part of the lesson wrap up
  • Peer feedback - explicitly in Lessons 6, 13, 15, 18, and 19

(6 minutes) Differentiation Scenarios

Facilitator Tip

If you have a large cohort, consider making two smaller groups using breakout rooms to discuss Differentiation and Grouping Scenarios. Bring all participants back to the main room for the Wrap Up. Be sure to coordinate this with the producer.

(1 minute) Participants read the scenarios and reflect on the prompt as a whole group.

Differentiation Scenarios:

  • A) Students are working on the Chapter 2 project. When it is time to link screens and begin to work independently on the project, one of the team members has a few consecutive absences and falls behind.

  • B) Groups have a variety of approaches for how they develop their paper prototypes and as a result, one group has finished early and has become disruptive to another group that is falling behind.

(5 minutes) Whole Group Share Out

  • Prompt:
    • How will you support early finishers and struggling students to maintain an inclusive classroom culture?

(6 minutes) Grouping Scenarios

(1 minute) Participants read the scenarios and reflect on the prompt as a whole group.

Grouping Scenarios:

  • A) A team appears to have split into pairs, rather than working as a group of four.

  • B) One team is struggling to agree and complete the presentation for the Chapter 2 project. They did not approach you sooner and do not appear to be able to finish the presentation on time.

(5 minutes) Whole group share out

Participants share out their thoughts and ideas regarding how grouping can support both individual and collaborative learning.

  • Prompt:
    • How will the way you group students support their individual and collaborative learning? (teacher selected vs student selected, homogeneous vs heterogeneous)
    • How will the way you group students support an inclusive classroom culture?

Other Considerations (12 minutes)

Remarks

A key aspect of Unit 4 to keep in mind is the focus is not on learning to program using App Lab. Rather the focus is on students identifying empathy as a component of the Problem Solving Process and recognizing CS needs many different roles to complete a project. Unit 4 supports students in thinking about CS as a way to solve problems that can have a broader social impact. As we wrap up this session, let’s take one final look at other considerations that may help us as we plan to implement Unit 4. We will focus on three areas for a final discussion on supporting collaborative student learning: establishing norms, communication expectations, and pacing.

(7 minutes) Additional Considerations

Facilitator Tip

As participants engage in small group discussions, circulate throughout the breakout rooms and listen in. Gather any common or key ideas that may need to be included in the share out with the whole group, if participants do not bring them up at that time.

Participants reflect and discuss the following prompts in breakout rooms.

Prompts:

  • How can each of the following support collaborative student learning to promote an inclusive classroom culture?

    • Establishing norms
      • Teacher selected vs Student selected
      • Volunteers vs Assigned roles
    • Communicating expectations
      • From the teacher
      • Between students
      • For student presentations
    • Pacing

  • Producer Instructions: Prepare breakout rooms with three to four participants in each room. Send participants to breakout rooms and after 7 minutes bring them back to the main room for the Whole Group Discussion that follows.

    • Transition to Breakout Rooms

    • Circulate Breakout Rooms

      • View the progress made on designated slides
      • Identify common or key ideas to bring to the whole group discussion

(5 minutes) Whole Group Discussion

Discussion Goal

By the end of the session, help participants focus on sharing more solutions and strategies than challenges. Refer to and remind participants of solutions/strategies mentioned throughout the session. Also, emphasize Unit 4 is about collaborative student learning - students learning alongside and from each other.

Prompts:

  • Was there a challenge or idea from your breakout room discussion that you feel would be valuable for the whole group to hear?
  • Was there a strategy or idea that you heard that you want to try?

Facilitator Note: If participants share either on a slide or during any discussion, having student helpers as a norm, this as an opportunity to engage participants in a brief discussion about student self-efficacy and the CS Discoveries approach of learning through discovery and inquiry. A goal for this discussion is to encourage participants to consider strategies that promote these values by having a role each student can actively engage with. Consider the following prompts as a guide:

  • How does the role of student helper support or detract from the value of having students form their own questions, solutions, and critique their own work?
  • How does the role of the helper support or detract from maintaining an inclusive classroom culture?
  • If early finishers are always assigned the role of student helper, are they being given an opportunity to deepen their understanding of concepts through discovery and inquiry?