Day 1
01 Workshop Opener 02 Committing to Equity 03 Break 04 Unit 7 Context 05 U7L1 Lesson Exploration 06 U7L3-4 Lesson Exploration 07 Lunch 08 Unit 7 Conclusions & Connections 09 Introduction to the Create PT 10 Break 11 Planning for Create PT 12 Wrap Up

Session 6: Lesson Exploration - U7L3-4 - Parameters & Return Practice & Make

60 minutes

lesson exploration

Purpose

Participants will need to understand how to create functions with a parameter and a return to adequately support students in preparing for the Create Performance Task. This session allows participants the chance to deepen their understanding of the concept, or, if they are already familiar with the concept, better understand what students will see in this unit.

Finally, after the previous session, participants have started to consider and hear other ideas about creating an inclusive classroom. This session allows participants to build upon that thinking.

Objectives

  • Participants understand how to make choices when implementing lessons that support equity within the classroom.
  • Participants understand the content and structure of the parameters and return EIPM sequence.

Supplies & Prep

Room Setup:

  • None.

Facilitator Supplies:

Participant Materials:

  • Journal 

Agenda

Previously, On CSP... (3 minutes)

The Task (2 minutes)

U7L3 - Parameters and Return Practice (20 minutes)

U7L4 - Parameters and Return Make (25 minutes)

Discussion (10 minutes)

Facilitation Guide

Previously, On CSP... (3 minutes)

💷 Use the slides to provide context for U7L3 - Parameters/return Practice lesson. Participants need to know:

  • In the Investigate lesson, students see two different apps.
    • One is a calculator that uses functions to calculate operations between two numbers.
    • One is a “word helper” which a user selects a letter and a number and the app gives them some words that start with that letter of that length. This app has a function that uses the parameters of the letter and the number to filter a list of words down to contain a list of words that meet the criteria.
  • In the Practice lesson, students will need to be able to use lists starting in level 3. This content was covered in Unit 5 for students.

The Task (2 minutes)

Remarks

💷 We will start by looking at the Practice lesson and then look at the following Make lesson. Each of the different lesson types has its own challenges and opportunities for creating an inclusive classroom. While looking at each lesson, our goal is twofold:

  1. To understand the content of the lesson
  2. To plan how you can support an inclusive classroom

While thinking about creating an inclusive classroom, you may want to consider some of the ideas we discussed in the Explore lesson. Some other ideas to consider are:

  • Encouraging students to focus on the problem-solving process (not just the product)
  • Supporting students taking risks
  • Building relationships with students to identify opportunities to connect learning to their personal experience.
  • Maintaining high expectations for all students to counter stereotypes about who should excel in CS.
  • Grounding concepts in the real world is good practice in any classroom.
  • Differentiating in a way that is inclusive
  • Recognizing students’ specific skills that they bring to the classroom

Our goal is to be as concrete as possible when planning how to support an inclusive classroom. We want to consider which students are we actively engaging in the learning.

U7L3 - Parameters and Return Practice (20 minutes)

Facilitator Tip

Participants can choose to work independently or collaboratively during this time.

Give participants 15 minutes to do the task. After 15 minutes, ask them to focus on the guiding questions and add their thoughts in their journals. We will discuss these after the next lesson participants look at.

Teaching Tip

If participants attended the previous workshop and/or taught Unit 5, they should have the background knowledge they need to do these levels. That being said, take note of who might need additional content support during this exploration. If you notice a group of participants who need additional support, be prepared to create a “study group” at a specific table to talk through the levels. You can also encourage participants to utilize the tools available in App Lab such as the documentation or the “Help and Tips” tab.

💷 Do This:

  • Open the lesson plan for U7L3. Skim the lesson plan, paying attention to the teaching tips.
  • Open up the lesson on CodeStudio and start doing the levels, starting at Level 1.

💷 Reflection Questions:

  • How might you differentiate during this Practice lesson?
  • What is your plan to intentionally create an inclusive classroom environment during this lesson? Which students are you hoping to target with these plans?

Take note of the definition of “inclusion” on the screen.

U7L4 - Parameters and Return Make (25 minutes)

Give participants 20 minutes to do the task. After 20 minutes, ask participants to focus on the guiding questions and add their thoughts in their journals.

💷 Do This:

  • Open the lesson plan for U7L4. Skim the lesson plan, paying attention to the teaching tips.
  • Open the Activity Guide linked in the lesson plan. Skim the activity guide.
  • Open up the lesson on Code Studio and start doing Levels 1 and 2.
    • Note, it is not expected that you finish level 3, but instead you should be able to start the level and understand what challenges students might encounter when starting the level themselves.

💷 Reflection Questions:

  • What is your plan to intentionally create an inclusive classroom environment during this lesson?
  • Which students are you hoping to target with these plans?

Discussion (10 minutes)

Facilitator Tip

Encourage participants to consider how they help students use the resources and tools available to them in each of these lessons. These resources and tools are in the Help and Tips tab or might be a set of debugging strategies.

(5 minutes) 💷 Table Share Out

Prompts:

  • In each of these lessons, what opportunities and challenges did you see to creating an inclusive classroom?
  • Which students are you thinking of when you’re making decisions about how to implement lessons in your classroom?

As participants are talking and writing in the slides, look for common themes or important ideas you want to discuss in the full group share-out. Specifically, look for:

  • Teachers who are planning on using the tools in the curriculum (such as the activity guide in the make lesson or debugging strategies in the practice lesson).
  • Teachers who have considered how students with specific identities may engage with the lesson/tasks more easily than others.
  • Teachers who have plans for supporting having high expectations of all students.
  • Teachers who have concrete plans for building relationships between students in class and between the teacher and student in class.

(4 minutes) 💷 Share Out

Choose a share-out method that works best for your group and goals. This might be:

  • To have each table share something of their choosing
  • Selecting one item on each slide for a group to elaborate on
  • Focusing on a few challenges/questions that were raised in the slides

(1 minute) Wrap Up

Remarks

Your classroom is already inclusive to some students, but most likely there are some students who do not have that same sense of “belonging” in computer science class as others. Last workshop we asked you to identify and recognize skills students bring to the class to help all students feel intellectually included in the classroom space. As we think of inclusion more broadly, we also need to consider how we include students’ identities in being important contributions to the field of computer science. In our next workshop, we will be building on this idea further as we discuss data and the impact of computing in society.