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

Session 2: Model Lesson 1 - U1L3: Exploring Problem Solving

60 minutes

lesson exploration

Purpose

Essential Practice: The teacher makes choices when implementing a lesson for their context while maintaining the integrity of the lesson structure and design

Lesson Decisions:

  • Facilitate a lesson that includes a warm up, activity, and wrap up.
  • Use slides to guide students through the lesson - not a tool for lecture and front loading
  • Reinforce the steps of the problem solving process in individual conversations with groups and in whole group discussions.

Debrief Topic: Problem Solving Process and Lesson Structure

Objectives

  • Participants understand the structure of a CS Discoveries lesson - warm up, activity, wrap up
  • Participants understand the role of the Problem Solving Process in the CS Discoveries curriculum
  • Participants have a shared definition for identity

Supplies & Prep

Room Setup:

  • Full Cohort
  • Table Groups (3-4)

Facilitator Supplies and Prep:

Teacher Materials:

Agenda

Introduction to TLO and Previously On (10 minutes)

Lesson (25 minutes)

Debrief (15 minutes)

Identity Reflection (10 minutes)

Facilitation Guide

Introduction to TLO and Previously On (10 minutes)

(3 minutes) Previously On

Lesson 1 - Introduction to Problem Solving

  • Aluminum foil boats
  • Iterative problem solving, planning, reflection, collaboration
  • Use Problem Solving Process but not formally introduced

Lesson 2 - The Problem Solving Process

  • Reflect on experiences solving problems
  • Introduction to the problem solving process

(4 minutes) TLO Introduction

Throughout the week we are going to engage in a set of role playing activities designed to achieve a few things at once:

  • Give people a shared experience with the curriculum, from which they can talk about student needs
  • Provide meaningful experience with the course materials (what’s it like to read through and plan a lesson?)
  • Put the CS content required for CS Discoveries into context, and give participants space to learn some of that content

Facilitator explains everyone’s roles during the model lesson:

  • One facilitator will act as the teacher. They will not drop character. They will act like they are teaching this to a class of students.
  • The other facilitator will act as the observer. They will sit at the back of the room and observe the lesson. The observer is not there to evaluate your teaching. They will not be sharing feedback on your lesson in any way. They will keep time for the teacher and warn them as they get close to 40 minutes. Their main focus while observing is to look for things the group can discuss at the end of the lesson to think about how this lesson will impact students in your future classes. After the lesson, they will run the debrief.

  • All of you (the teachers) will act as learners in the lesson. Try to embrace your learner role and if you have a question or idea of something that would make this lesson challenging with your students feel free to try to act as that kind of learner (within reason - i.e. don't go climbing under the tables). You can also jot down your thoughts and we will have time to discuss it after the lesson.

  • NOTE: When we do TLOs during the workshop, we are trying to spend time engaging with the material and trying out different ways to teach it. We are not really trying to practice classroom management skills. Therefore when you act as a "learner", it is good to try out some of the different ways students will learn the material but please don't start yelling out, climbing under tables, etc.

(3 minutes) Context Setting

Remarks

We just shared our CS journeys. These journeys impact who we are as CS teachers and how we interact with students in our classrooms. Our experiences as students are a part of that journey.

(2 minutes) Prompt: Think about your own experience as a middle or early high school student. Make a list of characteristics that describe you when you were a middle or early high school student.

Remarks

As we engage in this model lesson together, try to embody the characteristics of yourself as a student. Put your hats on and let's get ready to go!

Lesson (25 minutes)

Warm Up (5 minutes)

Journal Prompt: Think of the silliest problem the problem solving process could help with. Be prepared to say how each step of the process could apply.

Producer Tip

Assign participants in table groups of 3 (ideal) or 4 for the Activity.

Discussion Goal

This discussion serves as a review of the problem solving process and highlights how many different types of problems there could be. Encourage students to be creative and have some fun with the different "problems" they might solve.

Allow participants to share out individually.

Remarks

With such a wide variety of problems and strategies, it's important to be able to think about how best to use the problem solving process. Today, we're going to look at some different types of problems, talk about what makes them different, and reflect on how the problem solving process helped us solve them.

Question of the Day: How can we apply the problem solving process to many different kinds of problems?

Teaching Tip

This is a long lesson that will likely span two class periods. In this model lesson you will only do one of the activities from the full lesson. You should, however, still open with a warm up and close with a wrap up. This will be important for upcoming discussions about lesson structure.

Activity (15 minutes)

Group: The lesson is modified to one activity: Birthday Guest. Participants should be working together in groups, even if they record their results individually. Groups of 3 will likely work best. Distribute: Direct participants to the Activity Guide Slide. They also have a printed handout in the Activity Packet.

Teaching Tip

Integrating the Problem Solving Process: This problem is particularly challenging if you don't Define the problem well. If you take it at face value, your job is to randomly guess and check where to put individual people until you find a solution. It is much easier if you define the problem as place groups of friends instead. Make groups of 2 or 3 you know need to be together and then figure out which groups can't be at the same table. This isn't the only approach to the problem, and you shouldn't rush to introduce it as such. Rather, encourage students to discuss with one another what they know needs to be true at the end and whether different approaches might help.

Draw Pictures: Students will likely do better if they draw pictures. You may wish for students to use a journal or scratch paper as a place to brainstorm ideas.

Extending the Problem: If one group finishes far before others, you could give them a blank sheet of paper and ask them to solve the problem again but with a new condition of your choosing (e.g. pick two people sitting at the same table in their solution and ask whether they can solve the problem now that those two people are also in a fight.)

(10 minutes) Solving Problems

Birthday Guests Direct the class to the birthday guests problem. Participants may look at the printed handout in the Activity Packet, but they will do their work on a group slide. Give groups a 10-minute time limit.

Circulate: Circulate the breakout rooms and view progress made on the Activity slides, noting the types of strategies that groups are using. Remind them to use the steps of the problem solving process to help them if they're getting stuck.

(5 minutes) Return to Whole Group

Discuss: Briefly discuss with participants what parts of the activity they felt fell into each step of the problem solving process. Some possible points to make after students share are below.

  • Define: The problem seems to be a problem of seating individuals. If you instead think of it as a problem of seating groups of people who would like to be together there are many fewer possible solutions to consider.
  • Prepare: Ask participants to share what types of strategies they considered before just starting to assign people to seats.
  • Try: As before, patience and persistence is important to see your plan through
  • Reflect: If early strategies are not working groups may have regrouped and tried a more structured approach

Wrap Up (5 minutes)

Discussion Goal

There are many different strategies to help define problems, including the questions on the previous lesson's activity guide. Some potentially useful questions include:

  • Who in particular does the problem affect? What specifically do they need? In what kind of situations?
  • Why does the problem exists? Keep asking to get to the heart of the problem.
  • How could I be able to tell if the problem had been solved? What could I observe or measure?

Question of the Day: How can we apply the problem solving process to many different kinds of problems?

Journal Prompt: The problem solving process is particularly helpful when we encounter poorly-defined problems. We saw today that without a well-defined problem the rest of the problem solving process is difficult to follow. What are some questions or strategies we can use to help us better understand and define problems before we try to solve them?

Discuss: Have groups share quickly before taking suggestions from the class as a whole.

Remarks

Excellent work everyone. We now understand a great deal about the problem solving process. This is going to be an incredibly useful tool that we'll use repeatedly throughout the year as we dig deeper into understanding the world of computer science.

Debrief (15 minutes)

Suggested Debrief Plan
Be Sure to Model Essential
Practices		 The teacher makes choices when implementing a lesson for their context while maintaining the integrity of the lesson structure and design
Lesson Decisions
  • Facilitate a lesson that includes a warm up, activity, and wrap up.
  • Use slides to guide students through the lesson - not a tool for lecture and front loading.
  • Reinforce the steps of the problem solving process in individual conversations with groups and in whole group discussions.
If the essential practices, listed above, are present in the lesson we recommend the following for your debrief:
Debrief Direction Topic Problem Solving Process and Lesson Structure
Goal
  • Participants understand the structure of a CSD lesson - warm up, activity, wrap up
  • Participants understand the role of the Problem Solving Process in the CSD curriculum
To reach this goal, consider using the following reflection and discussion prompts:
Debrief Suggestions Shares “Choices, Advice, and Takeaways”
Reflection
Prompt		 As a learner, why are we doing this type of activity in a computer science class?
Discussion
Prompts		 Discussion Goal: As an introduction activity for teachers, the goal of this discussion is to highlight differences between their perceived understanding of a computer science class and the reality of Computer Science Discoveries. Teachers begin to see problem solving as an important element of computer science and break away from the idea that this is just a coding class.

Identity Reflection (10 minutes)

(2 minutes) Context Setting

Remarks

Let’s come back to the reflection we had before engaging in this lesson. The experiences we had when we were students help to shape us as CS teachers. These experiences were likely impacted by aspects of our identity.

Facilitator Tip

Consider adding the definition of identity to a poster that can hang on the wall for the remainder of the workshop. Whenever possible, model using this term while specifically naming identity markers and challenging participants to do the same.

The facilitator shares the definition of “identity” with the group.

Identity: How we each see who we are in the world.

Identity is made up of a variety of visible and hidden markers, like race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, education, physical abilities, etc., and it can be shaped by our experiences and histories.

Facilitator Instructions:

  • Introduce the social identity grid on page 3 of the activity guide
  • Give participants a few minutes to look over the grid
  • Let participants know that this grid is a tool that we will use throughout the week as we reflect on how our identities and the identities of our students impact both the teaching and learning that occurs in our classrooms

(2 minutes) Facilitator Modeling

Before asking participants to reflect on how their identity markers impacted their student experience, the facilitator will model this reflection using a personal example. The facilitator should be as specific as possible using specific social-identity markers and concrete examples.

Prompt: How was your experience as a middle or early high school student impacted by your identity? Try to use identity markers from the social identity grid when possible while reflecting on your experience as a student.

(6 minutes) Reflection

(2 minutes) Individual Reflection

Facilitator Tip

This time is intended to be a personal reflection to help participants start to make the connection between identity markers and the student experience. There will be time later for group sharing on this topic.

Prompt: How was your experience as a middle or early high school student impacted by your identity? Try to use identity markers from the social identity grid when possible while reflecting on your experience as a middle school student.

(3 minutes) Group Share Out

The facilitator invites a few participants to share out responses to the following prompt.

Discussion Goal

This is a quick share out intended to connect the lesson debrief to the identity reflection. In the debrief, participants were introduced to the idea that even though the lesson plans are provided, teachers still need to make choices about how they will implement the lessons with their students. This prompt takes the conversation a step further by highlighting that the choices we make as teachers are impacted by our own experiences and identities. This is an idea that will be further developed throughout the week.

Prompt: How might your identity and experience as a student impact the choices you make when planning for a lesson?

Remarks

As we continue to engage in lessons today and throughout the week, I challenge you to continue to reflect on ways specific identity markers have shaped who you are as a CS teacher and by extension the choices you make when planning lessons for your students.