Professional Learning Program Overview (8 minutes)

(3 minutes) Program Overview

Using slides to go over:

• Professional Learning Model:
  • 5 Summer Virtual Modules
  • 4 academic year workshops
• Advantages of the program:
  • Local staff and facilitators in different regions for professional development
  • Support new teachers locally through the school year
  • Resources for new districts and schools interested in adopting computer science

• Goals for Regional Partners:

  • Regional hub of nationwide CS education movement
  • Lead professional learning
  • Foster a strong CS community
  • Increase the number of schools offering, and students taking, computer science classes

(5 minutes) Workshop Overview

• Watch “What’s Up with Computer Science Discoveries?” video as a whole group

• Workshop Goals: (Covered across the entire year, but started during the summer workshop)

  • Understand the curriculum
  • Grow in understanding of equitable CS education
  • Transform practice
  • Develop empathy with the student experience
  • Become a part of a network of teachers who are doing similar work
• Schedule Overview: (participants follow along using a printed high level agenda while the facilitator explains the session modalities)
  • Facilitator Presentation Sessions (orange on agenda):
    • Start and end the day
    • Sessions where the facilitator wants to make sure everyone hears the same information
  • Lesson Exploration Sessions (teal on the agenda):
    • Experience the curriculum as both teacher and learner
    • In these sessions, you will have space to:
      • Become familiar with lessons from the curriculum
      • Actively explore and experiment with effective pedagogical techniques
      • Learn from others!
  • Lesson Planning Sessions (Green on the agenda):
    • Work with your lesson co-teachers to plan a lesson that you will co-teach later in the week
  • Discussion Session (purple on the agenda):
    • Learning from each other through discussion
  • Asynchronous Time (green on the agenda):
    • Work on assignments independently or with small groups. Facilitators will have office hours to assist participants when necessary.

Course Overview (15 minutes)

(5 minutes) Code.org Values and Philosophy

• (3 min) Participants read through the curriculum values and pedagogical values on pages 4 and 5 of the curriculum Guide

• (2 min) Participants share key takeaways with the group

(10 minutes) Curriculum Overview

• Curriculum Pathway:
  • Display the image of the Code.org course progressions highlighting where CS Discoveries falls in the progression
  • Make sure to note that all Code.org courses are designed to be used by students regardless of their prior experience with computer science. Completing CS Fundamentals courses is not a prerequisite for taking CS Discoveries and CS Discoveries is not a prerequisite for taking CS Principles.
• Course Outline:
  • (5 min) Participants read through pages 2 and 3 of the curriculum guide
• Flexible Implementation:
  • CS Discoveries is written as a full year course, but can be implemented in a variety of ways
  • Use slides to display the intended implementation for a full year course
  • Recognize that not all schools will have the time to complete the full course in one year. Some schools might make the choice to only offer a portion of CS Discoveries or to separate it over multiple grade levels. CS Discoveries is designed to work with multiple implementation methods.
  • Highlight the guidelines for adjusting the course to meet various scheduling needs
    • Always start with the Problem Solving unit, which introduces core frameworks and classroom norms
    • The second chapter of any unit can be skipped if pressed for time
    • Chapter 1 of Animations and Games is a suggested prerequisite for Physical computing (Unit 6)
  • Use slides to display additional implementation suggestions. (This information is also included in Appendix B of the Curriculum Guide)
• Unit Overviews:
  • Have participants turn to page 6 in the Curriculum Guide. Give participants a few minutes to flip through pages 6 - 26 to get a general sense of the information available for each unit. Remind participants that we will dig into each of the units more throughout the course of the professional learning program. The goal here is for participants to orient themselves to the information available to them in each unit.

Introduction to Unit 1 (6 minutes)

(6 minutes) Unit 1 Overview

Using the Unit 1 Overview on pages 6 - 8 of the Curriculum Guide as a guide, introduce Unit 1. Specifically emphasize:

• Structure of the unit
• Concepts covered in the unit
• Types of lessons
  • Mostly unplugged lessons
• Highlight the alternate lessons available
  • Aluminum Boats
  • Newspaper Table
  • Spaghetti Bridge
  • Paper Tower