Day 1
01 Intro 02 CSD Overview 03 Break 04 ML 1: U1L3 05 Tools and Strategies 06 Lunch 07 ML 2: U1L7 08 Tools and Strategies 09 Lesson Assignments 10 Break 11 Lesson Planning 12 Wrap Up 13 Fac. Debrief
Day 2
14 Intro 15 ML 3: U2L2 16 Tools and Strategies 17 Break 18 Lesson Planning 19 Lunch 20 ML 4: U2L3 21 Break 22 Tools and Strategies 23 TLO 1: U2L5 24 Wrap Up 25 Fac. Debrief
Day 3
26 Intro 27 Understanding Context 28 TLO 2: U2L6 29 Break 30 TLO 3: U2L9 31 Lunch 32 TLO 4: U2L11 33 Classroom Culture 34 Break 35 TLO 5: U2L16 36 Wrap Up 37 Fac. Debrief
Day 4
38 Intro 39 Bias and Responsibility 40 Unit 3 Intro 41 Break 42 TLO 6: U3L2 43 TLO 7: U3L3 44 Lunch 45 Differentiation 46 TLO 8: U3L4 47 Break 48 Content Wrap Up 49 Barriers, Opportunities, and Commitments 50 Wrap Up 51 Fac. Debrief
Day 5
52 Intro 53 Prep for the Year 54 Assessment 55 Break 56 Revisit Topics 57 Community 58 Lunch 59 Planning 60 Closing Ceremonies 61 End Early & Friday Facilitator Debrief

Session 16: Tools and Instructional Strategies

50 minutes

discussion-based

Purpose

This session builds off of the discussion of resources from the previous model lesson and leads into a discussion around assessment in CS Discoveries. By the end of this session, participants should know how to locate and use both teacher facing and student facing resources along. There is also time for participants to reflect on the role of assessment in their own classroom followed by a tour of assessment tools and resources.

Objectives

  • Participants have located the resources available to them to support student learning in their classrooms
  • Participants have reflected on the role assessment plays in their classroom
  • Participants are able to locate and use applicable assessment tools and resources

Supplies & Prep

Room Setup

  • Participants seated in pods working first as a pair and then as a group

Facilitator Supplies and Prep

Teacher Materials

Agenda

Resources (20 Minutes)

Assessment (29 minutes)

Pre - Break Reminders (1 minute)

Facilitation Guide

Resources (20 Minutes)

(1 minute) Context Setting

Remarks

During the debrief of the last model lesson, we talked about the importance of resources. Referencing resources is an industry standard practice in the field of computer science. Knowing where and how to reference resources will help students solve their own problems and expand their ability to create new things in more open ended activities. This, however, is a skill many students will need to develop through teacher support and classroom procedures. Resources are also available for teachers to both expand their own CS knowledge and enhance their teaching practice. We are going to take some time to explore some of these resources.

(8 minutes) Resource Exploration

Participants navigate to Code Studio and are instructed to spend some time exploring the teacher facing resources.

Facilitator Tip

During this time, try to model the practice of directing participants to resources to answer their questions instead of showing how to do things.

Participant Instructions:

  • Work with a partner to navigate to Code Studio
  • Select a lesson and explore both the teacher facing and student facing resources. Move to a new lesson in a new unit to explore the available resources.
  • Make a list of the resources you find.

(10 minutes) Discussion

  • (4 minutes) Table Discussion - Participants share their resource list with their table groups taking time to show where they found resources that other participants may have missed.
    • If table groups have identified all of the same resources, prompt them to discuss how they promote the skill of referencing resources among the students in their classrooms.

Discussion Goal

At a minimum, participants should identify the following resources:

  • Help and Tips Tab
  • Drop Down Tips (Web Lab)
  • Teacher Only Notes (Discussion goals on video lessons, teacher resources on the Overview Page, etc.)
  • Teacher Panel (sample solutions, student work, student view)
  • Lesson Plans
  • Exemplars
  • Sample marked project rubrics

Teaching Tip

At the conclusion of this activity, hang the resource poster in the room for participants to refer back to throughout the week. Whenever possible, try to refer participants to this resource poster when they have questions. This will help to normalize the idea of referencing resources to solve problems and answer questions.

(6 minutes) Whole Group Discussion - Return to the resource poster that was created during the model lesson. Add additional resources to the poster as groups share out.

  • It might be helpful for the facilitator to locate and show each of these resources for the whole group to see as groups share out.
  • During this time, the facilitator should highlight the PDF Help and Tips doc on the lesson overview page. This is intentionally included for students requiring printable resources as a part of an IEP, although the resource is available to all students. Like all resources, these documents are intended to be used as reference material, not notes to be memorized. They are also found in the Help and Tips tab throughout the lesson.

(1 minute) Transitional Remarks

Remarks

As you start to think about how you will structure your class and develop classroom routines, it is important to also think through ways that you might promote the development of the skill for referencing resources among your students. You will have more time to think about this later in the week and during the academic year workshops. Many of the teacher facing resources that we have identified can be used to help a teacher with assessment of student understanding of the lesson objectives.

Assessment (29 minutes)

(1 minute) Context Setting

Remarks

Assessment is a crucial component of student learning. There are many assessment resources and tools available within the CS Discoveries curriculum. We are going to spend some time exploring some of these tools and resources and discuss ways that you might be able to use them to support student learning in your classroom. Our discussion will focus around assessment in general and not grading, as grading policies vary from school to school. You will have time later this week to dig deeper into assessment and share ideas on ways you might use the tools provided to fit into your school based requirements for assessment and your own personal philosophy around assessment and grading.

(5 minutes) Purpose of Assessment

Reflection Prompt: Why do we assess student learning? What is the purpose?

Discussion Goal

Discussion Goal: The goal here is to get to the main point of assessment. We want to see where students are at in their learning so we can provide them with feedback and help them improve moving forward.

Discuss: Share out some thoughts that people wrote down.

(10 minutes) Guide to Assessment

Prompt: Head to pages 42 - 43 in your curriculum guide and read about the approach to and opportunities for assessment in the curriculum.

  • (4 minutes) Silent reading
  • (3 minutes) As a table, discuss any questions or ideas that came to mind while reading
  • (3 minutes) Share out and discuss questions with the whole group

Teaching Tip

Facilitator Tip: During this tour, it is helpful to have one facilitator lead the tour while the other facilitator circulates the room to answer questions.

(13 minutes) Assessment Tools

Participants use their own devices to follow along as the facilitator leads a tour of assessment resources. Make sure to allow time for participants to identify the items on the tour. This works best with one facilitator acting as the tour guide and the second facilitator acting as the tech support person.

  • Open a lesson plan and highlight the following
    • Objectives
    • Assessment opportunities
    • Links to exemplars
  • As you highlight the assessment tools within the lesson plan remind participants of the following:
    • Assessment should relate to the lesson objectives
    • Assessment opportunities are called out both at the top of the lesson plan and in callout boxes indicated by a purple check mark within the lesson plan
    • If a lesson is running long, the teacher can use the assessment opportunities as a guide for making decisions about whether to extend the lesson into the next day or to shorten the lesson to fit within a single class period. The key is to make sure students are mastering the lesson objectives as indicated by successful performance with assessment opportunities.
  • Navigate to Code Studio and open up Unit 2 Lesson 2 (previous model lesson)
    • Navigate to Level 6 - Assessment Level
      • Point out the purple check mark that indicates this is an assessment level
      • Click on the “Key Concept” tab and show the mini rubric for this level
      • Open the Teacher Panel to show where to find student work
      • Demonstrate how a teacher can navigate between class sections while reviewing student work using the “Viewing Section” drop down
      • Select a student to view
        • Participants should have been logged into your class section before completing the model lesson which means their work should show up in the panel
        • Either ask for a volunteer who wouldn’t mind having their work shared with the group, or have your co-facilitator complete the activity ahead of time and use their work as the example
      • Demonstrate how to leave individualized student feedback
      • Click on “View Teacher Dashboard” from the teacher panel
      • Point out how a teacher can quickly identify assessment levels by looking for the purple bubbles and the check mark icon
    • Navigate to a post project test. Explain to teachers that these are intended to assess Unit objectives that were not assessed in the project rubrics. These assessments are summative and are intended to be given in combination with end of chapter projects. Together, end of chapter projects and post-project unit tests assess the objectives of the unit.

Pre - Break Reminders (1 minute)

  • Participants now have a 15 minute break
  • If you are running behind, you can shorten the break to 10 minutes
  • Let participants know that after the break they will have time for lesson planning, so they should move to sit with their TLO group