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 57: Community

40 minutes

discussion-based

Purpose

The goal of this session is for participants to recognize that they are part of something bigger than what is happening just in their own classroom. For some teachers, computer science can be isolating because CS teachers often do not have a built in community in their schools like math or english teachers naturally have. This session is about expanding our idea of community to include our local community and the national computer science community.

Objectives

  • Participants identify potential community resources that could be used to enhance the learning experience of their students and raise CS awareness within the community outside of the classroom
  • Participants identify ways to connect with CS educators outside of their school community
  • Participants know how to access and engage with the Code.org community through the Code.org forum

Supplies & Prep

Room Setup:

  • Participants seated in pods

Facilitator Supplies:

Teacher Materials:

  • Journal
  • Computer

Agenda

Leveraging Community Resources (12 minutes)

Creating a PLC (18 minutes)

Code.org Community (10 minutes)

Facilitation Guide

Leveraging Community Resources (12 minutes)

(1 minute) Context Setting

Remarks

As we wrap up our time together, we will spend some time thinking about how we might leverage our community resources to enhance the learning experience for the students in our classrooms. Resources include people, tools, and programs, and can be in school, outside of school, and in the community. Other teachers, administrators, counselors, school staff, families, industry volunteers, librarians, and policymakers can all serve as resources. Not only does involving your community in your classroom enhance the student learning experience by adding relevance to the curriculum, it also raises awareness about CS education in the broader community.

Discussion Goal

Participants should articulate clear examples of ways they might involve their community in their classrooms. Possible examples include:

  • Reach out to your local NCWIT chapter to get a volunteer to speak to your class about the profession
  • Have students design websites for local businesses
  • Invite the person who runs the school website to class to provide feedback on student websites
  • Design an interactive card for a service member, residents of an elderly community, etc.
  • Partner with a younger grade level to create games that younger students might use to practice skills they are learning. CSD students might create games for kindergarten students to identify letters, colors, site words, etc.

(9 minutes) Brainstorm Ideas

Prompt: Think back to what you have learned about the CS Discoveries curriculum. Brainstorm ways that you might be able to involve your community to enhance the learning experience for your students?

  • (2 minute) Think: individual reflection
  • (2 minutes) Pair: discuss with a partner
  • (5 minutes) Share: share and discuss with the whole group

(2 minutes) Individual Reflection

Prompt: In your journal, make a note of one thing you will commit to doing to involve your community in your classroom.

Creating a PLC (18 minutes)

(4 minutes) Identify Your Communities

Remarks

In this space today, we have the benefit of our Code.org teacher community to brainstorm ideas for ways to leverage community resources in our classrooms. However, many of us might not have access to computer science educators to collaborate with at our individual schools. Unlike math, science, and language arts teachers, many computer science teachers are the only teachers that teach computer science in their building. Similarly, school wide professional development opportunities rarely focus on developing specifically as a CS teacher. These realities make it especially important for computer science teachers to be creative in developing a support network of CS educators to learn from and grow with.

The facilitator uses slides to establish a shared definition of a PLC.

Professional Learning Community (PLC) - a group of educators that collaborate, share ideas, and grow together

Participant Instructions: In your journal, reflect on communities that you have been a part of that have helped you learn and grow. What are some key characteristics of these communities? These communities do not have to be CS or education communities.

(4 minutes) Create Affinity Groups

For the next part of the activity, participants will join together with people that would like to seek out opportunities for creating community in a way that works for them. For example, some participants might be interested in finding educators to follow on Twitter, others might be interested in researching opportunities to connect with CS educators locally through a local CSTA chapter. The goal here is to connect people that are interested in learning more about opportunities in their prefered method of building a professional community.

Facilitator Instructions:

  • Have participants share out various methods for professional networking. (ex: social media, local conferences, national conferences, meetups with local teachers, etc.)
  • Make a list on chart paper as participants share out
  • Designate areas of the room for people to go to dig into their preferred method for building a professional community
  • Send participants to that area of the room with the goal of articulating at least one way they will engage with the larger CS education community

(10 minutes) Develop a Plan

Participant Instructions:

  • With your group, brainstorm ways to build a professional community within your preferred method for engagement
  • Commit to one thing you will do to engage with the larger CS community
    • Examples:
      • Write the date of your local CSTA conference in your calendar along with the date for early bird registration.
      • Follow a CS educator on Twitter.
      • Send and email to a CS teacher in your district.

Code.org Community (10 minutes)

(1 minute) Context Setting

Remarks

Another important community that is available to all of us is the Code.org community. When you teach the Code.org curriculum you are part of a network of thousands of teachers across the country who are teaching this curriculum. We are also building our local Code.org community right here in this room. Just like we are learning with and from each other this week, we can continue to collaborate with each other and other CS Discoveries teachers beyond this professional learning workshop experience. One way to do that is engaging with the Code.org forum.

(4 minutes) Forum Tour

The facilitator leads a guided tour of the Code.org forum while participants follow along on their own device.

Things to Highlight:

  • Forum url: forum.code.org
  • How to locate CSD specific content
  • How to post on the forum
  • How to find resources on the forum

(5 minutes) Forum Exploration

Participants work with a partner to explore forum resources. During the exploration, participants should look for resources that they might like to use in their classroom or tips that might be helpful to them while implementing the CSD curriculum.

Remarks

Although you might be the only teacher in your building teaching CS Discoveries, there is a community all around us. None of us are alone in this mission of bringing CS to our students. The more we all engage in the CS community, the more we can all continue to learn and grow together.