Day 1

In-Person CSP 2021-2022 Workshop #3

Agenda Walkthrough Resources

Below are a set of resources to help you get a sense of the flow of the workshop and key things to prep for.

  • Workshop Goals and Objectives
    The document outlines the overall goals and objectives for Workshop 3 along with where in the workshop these goals and objectives are addressed. We recommend you reviewing this document before reading the agenda.

  • Equity Content Overview
    This resource calls out places in the agenda where facilitators lead discussions and activities that are tied to our equity objectives.

  • Essential Content
    This resource points to which lessons are referenced in different points of the workshop.

Printing Agendas

To get a PDF of the whole detailed agenda:

  1. Go to https://curriculum.code.org/plcsp-21/q3/compiled.
  2. Right click. Click "print" from the menu that pops up.
  3. Print or save the agenda as a PDF.

For the high level agenda that is printable and editable, go to:

Google Sheet View of High Level Agenda

Prepping for your workshop

Materials

During this workshop, we recommend that each participant have a physical copy of the following materials printed out:

  • A copy of the AP Rubric (also known as the "Scoring Guidelines") for the Create Performance Task.
  • Printed copies of the Create PT Survival Guide.

If these materials cannot be printed, participants can use the digital versions linked online.

As a facilitator, you also may want to use physical manipulatives to demonstrate the U7L5 - Libraries Explore. You may also use the slides, but we have found that a different type of "a ha" moment happens when using physical manipulatives to explain how these concepts work. For this lesson, you may want the following physical materials:

  • A file folder
  • Envelopes
  • Paper

Note that you should review the lesson and prep these physical materials ahead of your workshop if you decide to go this route.

Connecting with your Regional Partner and Co-facilitator

  • Contact your regional partner to discuss materials, food plans, or special announcements.
  • Work with your co-facilitator to:
    • Determine who will run which sessions and what support will look like during each session.
    • Anticipate challenges for each session given your knowledge of your cohort.
    • Review your feedback and pre-survey data from teachers in the Workshop Dashboard to see what needs you can address

Create Materials for your Region

  • A copy of the CSP Workshop #3 Slides 21-22 for the workshop, that you have updated according to your needs. You may want to add extra slides for notes or use the speaker notes as a note taking area for your workshop.

Create Posters

  • Hang up the following posters for people to add post-its to as they come in:
    • Question Parking Lot - For people to put up questions they have.
    • "Where are we now?" - On a piece of poster paper, or on the board, create a histogram for teachers to indicate where they are in the curriculum. Remind teachers to take out their Curriculum Guide as a guide to unit progressions.

Refer to your Facilitator Handbook for complete lists and ideas about how to prepare for your workshop.

Concerns?

If you need to raise concerns before or during the workshop about issues that require immediate attention (internet, health issues, etc.) you should contact your regional partner.

Session 1: Workshop Opener

25 minutes

discussion-based

Purpose

Bring participants together to kick off the workshop and reflect on how things are going in the classroom. This is a place to check in on specific lessons that people have already taught, as well as pacing and teaching practices that were recommended or discussed in the previous workshop.

It is common to surface concerns during this session that can be revisited and addressed throughout the workshop.

Objectives

  • Participants can correct their own misconceptions and existing questions have been asked and answered.
  • Participants can reflect on the dynamic in their classroom and providing support.
  • Participants can evaluate their pacing at this point in the year and have ideas for how to get back on track if they’ve fallen behind.

Supplies & Prep

Room Setup (using the supplies provided by Regional Partner):

  • In pods
  • Posters up for people to add post-its to as they come in
    • “Where are we now?” - On a piece of chart paper or on the board create a histogram for teachers to add where they are in the curriculum.
    • Question Parking Lot - For participants to write and post questions they have.

Facilitator Supplies:

Participant Materials:

  • Curriculum guide (Should bring with them)
  • Journal (Should bring with them)
  • Computers for attendance
  • Pen/pencil
  • Post-its

Agenda

Workshop Opening Logistics (5 minutes)

Reconnect (15 minutes)

Room Share Out (5 minutes)

Teaching Guide

Workshop Opening Logistics (5 minutes)

Facilitator Tip

The 💷 symbol indicates that a slide is included in the slide deck to cover the content in that section. This is to help you know where you are in the agenda to some extent. It is important to note that the slides do not include all of the text from the agenda.

(0 minutes) As Participants Enter the Room

As participants enter the room, remind them to:

  • Take out their Curriculum Guide as a guide to unit progressions
  • Add post-its to the following posters:
    • “Where are we now?”: On a piece of chart paper or on the board, create a histogram for participants to add where they are in the curriculum.
    • Question Parking Lot: For people to write and post questions they have.

(1 minute) Attendance

Have everyone complete the attendance for the day on the online workshop dashboard found in your workshop.

Follow the instructions found in your Facilitator Handbook to take attendance for your workshop.

(2 minutes) 💷 Review the Agenda

Describe what will happen during this session - teachers should know that they will have time to talk about how the year is going more generally (classroom management, how students are responding, etc).

Walk through the agenda of the day. Participants should be aware that they will be gaining more experience with the programming concepts introduced in Unit 7 and the Create PT.

Facilitator Tip

More information about these norms can be found in our Professional Learning K-12 Norms One-Pager. This document isn’t necessary to distribute to participants, but can help to provide context for you as you review groups norms.

(2 minutes) 💷 Review Norms

Remind the group of the K-12 Professional Learning norms that were established during the Summer Workshop.

  • Be present.
  • Make space and take space.
  • Seek to understand.
  • Take risks.
  • Expect and accept non-closure.

Reconnect (15 minutes)

(3 minutes) Personal Reflection

Goal: Refresh your participants’ memories, and encourage them to think concretely about the lessons they’ve done so far and what’s coming soon.

💷 On your own, reflect on the following and be ready to share with someone else:

  • Think back to your 30-60-90 day plan you created in the last workshop to help recruit a group of students that represent your building as a whole. How is that plan going?
    • What successes have you had?
    • What do you want to try and re-visit yet this year or next year to recruit students to your classroom?
  • What have you done for students who have missed classes?
    • What challenges has this caused for you or for students?
    • What compromises have you made to support students who miss class?

Facilitator Tip

While discussions are happening, one facilitator should circle the room while the other reads over the post-its on the wall from when teachers came in the room. (posters described in the section above)

As teachers share in their groups, the facilitators are circulating to hear their thoughts and are thinking about the topics to discuss in the whole-group share out.

(7 minutes) 💷 Speed Network

Have participants “speed network” their responses to the three prompts above for two rounds of 3 minutes each. They should be looking for advice, ideas, questions, or issues.

(5 minutes) 💷 Table Share Out

Instruct participants to head back to tables and share their concerns and what they learned from others.

Discussion Goal

This should be a space to celebrate and share successes as well as seek out suggestions or provide advice when asked.

After tables have a chance to catch up and share, facilitators should circle the room to predict what questions will likely be raised in the share out next. Facilitators should also listen for larger themes that they want to pull out in the share out if no participants raise topics.

Room Share Out (5 minutes)

Discussion Goal

This is time to get a bigger perspective from the room. The goal is to provide multiple opportunities to share and discuss topics that are important to teachers in the classroom.

💷 Facilitators open the floor to the whole group to celebrate successes or raise questions that could not be resolved at the tables. This might be around recruiting, supporting absent students, or a different topic raised at tables.

  • What successes do you want to share with the room?
  • What questions do you have that you want to address today?

If this session starts to run long, suggest that the remaining questions go on post-it notes to the question parking lot.

If you are interested in licensing Code.org materials for commercial purposes, contact us.

Session 2: Committing to Equitable Teaching Practices

35 minutes

discussion-based

Purpose

This session serves as a place for participants to make a commitment to equity before the school year is over, and just before heading into preparations for the AP test (if their students are taking it). Participants are asked to reflect on their own personal values as they relate to equitable CS education, and use them to build a commitment that they’re excited to work toward. This commitment will be revisited in AYW #4.

Objectives

  • Participants can describe the commitment they will pursue in support of equity in CS, and the strategies they will use to support that commitment.
  • Participants can define the support they will need to pursue that commitment.
  • Participants can identify the measurement(s) they will use to track progress toward the commitment

Supplies & Prep

Room Setup:

  • None

Facilitator Supplies:

Participant Materials:

  • Journal (Should bring with them)
  • Pen/pencil

Agenda

Identifying Our Values (16 minutes)

Making a Commitment (18 minutes)

Wrap Up (1 minute)

Teaching Guide

Identifying Our Values (16 minutes)

Facilitator Tip

The slides for this session include an overview of the equity work done so far this year. If you’ve adapted any of the context, you may need to update the slide to reflect what your group actually did.

(3 minutes) Set Context

Remarks

💷 So far this year, we’ve worked to evolve our understanding of equity as it relates to CS education. To get to this point, we’ve done a lot of work with identity, context, responsibility, and barriers and opportunities.

Since this is our second-to-last Academic Year Workshop together, we’re going to make a commitment to equity in our own classrooms that we can revisit during our last workshop as a community. Making a commitment isn’t the last step of the equity cycle, it’s just one of the steps that will help sustain your work in CS.


💷 Display PL Equity Framework with “Making a Commitment” highlighted. Note all of the steps that have led to participants engaging thoughtfully with the process, and that the work is ongoing this year and future years.

Remarks

We’ll be making sure our commitments are anchored in our values to make each one personal. These values are separate from Code.org’s Professional Learning or Curriculum values - these are the values that guide our own thoughts and actions.

Each of our values have been informed by our own lived experiences. We may have a strong sense of injustice after having been treated unfairly for one of our visible identity markers our whole life. Or perhaps you grew up in a community with inaccessible spaces, and now you’re interested in making your classroom accessible to students of all abilities. Whether or not we realize it, we bring these identities and experiences with us into the classroom.


Facilitator Tip

When preparing a personal example, it may be useful to use a concrete experience or scenario to anchor the personal value.

For example, “When I was first starting out with teaching, I had an administrator who led the best professional development sessions, and it all came down to making us feel heard and included in discussions. Now, when I facilitate, I try as much as possible to call on a variety of people so that everyone knows that their voice is important.”

Facilitator shares an example of a personal value that is important to their teaching or facilitation practice and how it manifests.

(13 minutes) Identifying Our Values

Remarks

In order to make a commitment to equity later on in this session, let’s take a moment to clarify our personal values, specifically as they relate to equitable education.


💷 Introduce the personal values activity:

  • Choose three personal values from the list on the next slide (or perhaps values that aren’t on the list!) that most resonate with you and the equitable teaching practices you’re growing as a CS educator.
  • Create three webs with a central bubble to hold these values. Around the central bubble, create bubbles branching out.
  • Within each outside bubble, jot down a word or phrase that would be evidence of this value in your classroom.
    • 💷 For example, if you chose gender inclusivity, you might draw a connected bubble that says, “Hang posters with people of all genders represented” or “Challenge stereotypes of what is a “masculine” or “feminine” App
    • Lab project in conversations with students to encourage them to pursue their interests”

(8 minutes) Independent Work Time

Participants create their own web in their journals. This time can be used independently or in small groups to help generate ideas.

(4 minutes) 💷 Partner Share Out:

  • Share with a partner which of your values is most important to you and the evidence of the value in your classroom.
  • Why is this value most important to you?

Making a Commitment (18 minutes)

(3 minutes) Introduce the Task

Remarks

Now that we’ve clarified our own personal values, we can use this as the foundation for creating a commitment to equity that we’re genuinely animated to pursue. This commitment may change and evolve over time as you grow as a CS educator.

Facilitator Tip

This activity has been adapted from University of Houston’s Center for Diversity and Inclusion “This is My House” activity.


💷 Introduce the house metaphor for making a commitment to equity:

  • The foundation of the house is the value that you’d like to base your commitment on.
  • The roof is the commitment that you’ll make. This is a statement that is actionable and can be evaluated using quantitative or qualitative data.
  • The walls are:
    • The support that you’ll need - either resources or other people - to work toward your commitment and
    • The measurements to track progress so that you can be accountable to your commitment

Remarks

When we talk about measurements, we’re not explicitly talking about test scores. That’s just one aspect of the long laundry list of qualitative and quantitative data that can help you track your progress. Tying these measurements back to the value you’ve identified can help you move away from traditional ideas of “measurements”.


💷 Review the example house in the slideshow. If you would like to customize the slide with the example commitment to make this more personal to your own values, please feel free to make a copy of the slide and adjust.


(10 minutes) 💷 Make a Commitment

Give participants 10 minutes to make their own commitment by choosing a slide from the slide deck and filling it out. These commitments will be revisited during AYW #4, so make sure to save the link to the slide deck for future reference.

Remind participants that the commitment should be rooted in access, diversity, and inclusion in CS, as well as measurable by qualitative or quantitative data.

(5 minutes) Share Out

Allow participants to share out their commitments to equitable CS education whole group. Use this time to celebrate participants’ growth in and commitment to equity.

Wrap Up (1 minute)

Remarks

Thank you for taking the time to re-engage with the equity framework! When we root our commitments in our own personal values as they relate to CS education, we’ll be more likely to be inspired to achieve them.

We will be checking in during the next Academic Year Workshop to see how we’ve grown toward our commitment.

If you are interested in licensing Code.org materials for commercial purposes, contact us.

If you are interested in licensing Code.org materials for commercial purposes, contact us.

Session 4: Context for Unit 7 Lesson Exploration

20 minutes

discussion-based

Purpose

This session both provides context for Unit 7 and prepares participants to think about their roles in creating inclusive classrooms during the lessons they look at during the lesson exploration.

Objectives

  • Participants can describe how the content builds on itself between units.
  • Participants have identified areas they would like to improve to make their classrooms more inclusive.
  • Participants have identified barriers in their classrooms, school, and teaching practice that limit inclusion in CS.
  • Participants have identified the responsibility they want to claim to support equity in CS education.

Supplies & Prep

Room Setup:

  • None

Facilitator Supplies:

Participant Materials:

  • None

Agenda

Introduction to Unit 7 (5 minutes)

Grounding Reflections (15 minutes)

Teaching Guide

Introduction to Unit 7 (5 minutes)

Have participants navigate to the Unit 7 Curriculum Landing Page. Participants can find more information about the unit by clicking the ‘i’ next to the title, “Parameters and Return Values” on this page. As they navigate to the landing page, set some context for Unit 7.

(2 minutes) 💷 Set Context for Unit 7

Use the slides to guide your overview including:

  • This unit follows Unit 6 - Algorithms, which is an unplugged, 6 lesson long unit.
  • This is the last unit where students learn new programming concepts.
  • After this unit, students will be guided through how to complete the Create Performance Task to College Board standards.
  • At the start of Unit 7, students will be about 15 school weeks into the school year. Since Unit 6 should be your first unit in semester 2, this unit is approximately 1 week into your second semester.

(3 minutes) What is in Unit 7?

Review what is in Unit 7 at a high level by going to the Unit 7 Curriculum Landing Page. Again, the unit information can be found by clicking the ‘i’ next to the title, “Parameters and Return Values”. Participants should be looking at the landing page along with you.

  • There are only 2 EIPM sequences in this unit - one on Parameters/Return and one on Libraries. Today we will be focusing on the parameters/return EIPM sequence.
    • Students need to use a function with a parameter and a return for the Create PT.
    • Libraries force students to think about the uses of functions with a parameter and return in a context that computer scientists use frequently - libraries.
  • The project in this unit requires students to create a library, or a group of functions. One of the requirements of the library is that one of those functions include a parameter, return, a loop, and an if-statement. Students will need to be able to create a function that has all of these features. This is one way we are preparing students for the Create PT - they will need to write a similar function for the Create PT too.

Grounding Reflections (15 minutes)

(2 minutes) Review the Morning Task

Review the high level plan for the Lesson Exploration. The goal here is to focus participants on the task that comes after the break. Below are some talking points for you to consider as you review the morning task:

  • The lesson explorations are going to be focused around the Parameter/return EIPM sequence. Specifically, participants will look at the Explore, Practice, and Make lessons for this.
  • While looking at each of these lessons we want to consider the computer science content taught, but we also want to think about creating an inclusive classroom in each of these lessons.
  • In our last workshop we talked about recognizing student skills that they bring to the CS classroom and publicly recognizing those skills. This was done to help students recognize how they individually contribute to the classroom in meaningful ways. Really, this was to help build a classroom of inclusion.
  • For each lesson we look at today, we are going to further reflect on what decisions you can make to build a more inclusive classroom.

(12 minutes) What does it mean to have an “inclusive classroom”?


(2 minutes) Defining “Inclusive Classrooms”

Remarks

💷 When we talk about an “inclusive classroom,” that means different things to different people. Every classroom is likely to be inclusive to SOME of your students, but our goal is for the classroom to be an inclusive space for EVERY student.

In 2019, Microsoft, in partnership with CSTA, Code.org, NCWIT and other organizations compiled a “Guide to inclusive computer science education”. In this report, they defined “Inclusion” as “Creating learning environments that are accessible and welcoming of students’ identities, backgrounds, differences and perspectives without barriers or judgment. This means actively attending to gender, race, ethnicity, ability or socioeconomic status.”


(10 minutes) Think-Pair-Share

💷 (2 minutes) Journaling prompt: In our last workshop, you identified ways to gather qualitative and quantitative data you could use to understand barriers to access, diversity and inclusion, specifically when it comes to recruiting students to your classroom.

  • What data have you uncovered or learned more about?
  • What are the barriers (if any) keeping students from feeling included in CS education at your school?

💷 (3 minutes) Partner share

💷 (2 minutes) Journaling prompt: Based on the definition for inclusion, what steps can you take to build an inclusive CS space at your school? What does this look like or sound like to you?

💷 (3 minutes) Full Group Share Out

(1 minute) 💷 Wrap Up

Remarks

After the break we are going to start diving into lessons. As we look at the computer science content and consider how we will implement these lessons in your classrooms, plan for how you can make progress toward making the classroom more inclusive. Keep the specific area you wanted to focus on in mind.

If you are interested in licensing Code.org materials for commercial purposes, contact us.

Session 5: Lesson Exploration - U7L1 - Parameters & Return Explore

30 minutes

lesson exploration

Purpose

As with all of the Lesson Explorations, this session is intended to help participants understand the content and pedagogy in this lesson and consider how they will implement the lesson in their classrooms. This lesson was chosen because students need to understand this content in order to engage successfully in the Create PT. For this reason, the facilitator takes a more active role in this session to describe the mental model used in the lesson. Once participants understand the concepts of this lesson, they can apply the concept in the following Lesson Exploration sessions.

Objectives

  • Participants know how the mental model of a function with parameters and a return builds on previous mental models.
  • Participants understand how to use a function with a parameter and a return.

Supplies & Prep

Room Setup:

  • None

Facilitator Supplies:

Participant Materials:

  • Slides
  • Journal 

Agenda

Functions in Unit 4 (5 minutes)

Lesson demo (15 minutes)

Reflection (10 minutes)

Teaching Guide

Functions in Unit 4 (5 minutes)

💷 This lesson builds on what students have seen in Unit 4. Remind participants of how functions are introduced in Unit 4 using the slides.

  • We look at functions as a way to organize code and reduce the number of lines of code we need.
  • Students look at the “updateScreen” function for several apps to see how the code inside the function definition works

Remarks

💷 Unit 7 builds on this understanding by using a mental model for a function with parameters and a return by using an envelope, stickies, and directions inside the envelope for the function. As we look at the Explore lesson for parameters and return, we will walk through the slides for the Explore lesson together. This is not intended to be a model lesson but rather a lesson “walk through” intended to help narrate the material presented in the lesson. As we go through the material, keep in mind ways you can implement this lesson to create an inclusive classroom.

Lesson demo (15 minutes)

💷 Run through the slides from the Explore lesson. This is not intended to be a model lesson, but instead a demonstration on how the content will run.

Slides                     Speaker Notes
Say: This lesson starts off with the function “makeCake” which creates a cake with a number of tiers and a flavor.

Click for animation
Say: If I flip over the envelope, and open it up there's a recipe inside. This recipe is going to tell me how to make the cake I've specified.
Say: To do this, I'm going to replace tiers with 3 and flavor with lemon, every time those words show up in the recipe. But notice - this recipe is pretty general. I could use it to make lots of different types and sizes of cake.

Click for animation

Say: Ok, let's make our cake. Remember, each time I come across tiers or flavor, I'm going to replace that word with the appropriate value. Once I'm done, I will have baked a 3 layer lemon cake!

Click for animation: There are several steps to click through here. Take it slow so participants can see each part.
Say: This is a function! It should look familiar, but it has a few extra parts. This function has parameters. Parameters are used as plaeholders for values that will be passed through the function.

Click for animation

Say: Those values passed to the parameter are called arguments.

Click for animation
Say: Having a function with parameters allows our function to be used for a greater variety of purposes. Imagine if I created a function for makeLemonCake,makeChocolateCake, and makeVanillaCake… it could go on for awhile!

By creating a function with parameters, I can create different outputs more easily by giving it different values or arguments.

This summarizes the need for functions with parameters.

In the lesson plan, this is also when students are given an activity guide that asks them to create a function that describes how to make a house with given parameters. Students use the manipulatives to create the function and write the directions inside the function in pseudocode.
Say: The second half of the lesson is dedicated to understanding how “return” works. To do this, we look at a function “cakeCost”. It has tiers and flavor also as parameters.

Click for animation
Say: Let's open the envelope and check out how this function works.
Say: There are a few new things here. First, we've created two local variables. Remember, the local variables are contained within the function and can't be updated or accessed outside of the function. We learned about this when we discussed variable scope.

Click for animation

In this function, a decision (in this case, how much to charge per flavor) is made based on the argument passed through the parameter.

Click for animation

Finally, the total is returned, but returned where? What does that mean?

Click for animation
Say: If the program hits a return at any point in running a function, it will stop and a value will be "returned". Where is it returned? To the place in the program where the function was called.
Say: Here's how this looks in JavaScript. It's ok if it's a little confusing. You'll get to play with this in Code Studio in the next lesson. For now, notice how the statement is set up. A variable is set up with the name cakeCalculator. This gets the value that is returned from the function cakeCost which has two arguments 3 and lemon passed through the parameters. After the function is evaluated, cakeCalculator now stores the value 12.
Say: We can also print to the console like so.

**Do This: Read through as a class.
After we walk through this as a class, students complete a second challenge in the activity guide to create a function that returns the cost of building a house.

Reflection (10 minutes)

(2 minutes) 💷 Quick Lesson Summary

This is time to zoom out and take a big-picture look at the lesson and its key beats. This includes:

  • Warm-up: Asking students, Why would you want to make your code easier to work with or read?
  • Activity
    • Students use stickies, envelopes and paper to follow along as the teacher walks through the makeCake function.
    • Students are introduced to the vocabulary of parameters and arguments
    • Students write their own function in pseudocode for a “build a house” function and trade functions with other students to follow their directions with specific arguments.
    • Students return to the full class and learn about what a return does in a function through the cakeCost function
    • Students create their own function that returns the cost of a house
  • In the wrap-up the teacher summarizes everything they learned in the lesson.

(7 minutes) Reflection and Discussion

(2 minutes) 💷 Journaling prompt: Now that you have an idea of how this lesson runs, think back to what we thought of an inclusive classroom looking and sounding like.

  • Which of those things could you expect to see in this lesson?
  • What are some concrete strategies that you might enact to fight barriers to inclusion in this lesson?

Discussion Goal

We want to use this time to share ideas but also push thinking on inclusive classrooms. Challenge participants to think of specific students that they are intentionally seeking to include through these actions. The actions should be concrete and seek to create an inclusive classroom for specific students.

(5 minutes) Full Group Share Out and Discussion

  • 💷 Make sure to capture the ideas presented here in the slides.
  • This should also be an actively facilitated conversation. This means, as a facilitator, you should be asking probing questions that support the discussion goal.

(1 minute) Wrap Up

Remarks

We are going to look at two other lessons from this EIPM sequence next. For these next few lessons, you will have more time to explore the lessons independently or with your table - as facilitator(s), I/we will not be doing quite as much voicing over. This will allow you to dig into parts of the lesson you want to spend more time with and also allow you more time to consider how the given lesson creates opportunities for an inclusive classroom or consider how your role as the teacher may be able to create an inclusive classroom. It may be helpful to think about the specific area of inclusion you identified earlier today that you wanted to work on further.

If you are interested in licensing Code.org materials for commercial purposes, contact us.

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)

Teaching 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.

If you are interested in licensing Code.org materials for commercial purposes, contact us.

If you are interested in licensing Code.org materials for commercial purposes, contact us.

Session 8: Unit 7 Conclusions and Connections

30 minutes

facilitator presentation

Purpose

This session covers the content not covered in the “Lesson Investigation” sessions from Unit 7. This also sets-up our discussion about the Create PT later in the afternoon.

Objectives

  • Participants understand how the content in Unit 7 is tied to the Create PT.
  • Participants understand how the content in Unit 7 builds on itself throughout the course of the unit.

Supplies & Prep

Room Setup:

  • None

Facilitator Supplies:

Participant Materials:

  • None

Agenda

Overview of Unit 7 (2 minutes)

Introduction to Libraries (10 minutes)

Unit 7 Project (18 minutes)

Teaching Guide

Overview of Unit 7 (2 minutes)

(2 minutes) 💷 Remind Participants of Context

Use the slides to guide your review, including:

  • This is the last unit where students learn new programming concepts.
  • We did not look at the “Libraries” EIPM sequence, but we will look over that together here.
  • The unit ends with students creating and sharing a library with other students. The requirements of this project mirrors the requirements of the AP Create Performance Task

Introduction to Libraries (10 minutes)

(10 minutes) Introduce Libraries

💷 Use the slides to introduce the concept of the library. You may want to use physical manipulatives here instead of the slides to describe what libraries are. This may be useful for those teachers who would benefit from a shared mental model when learning new CS concepts.

Slides                     Speaker Notes
Click for animation: Stop once all three envelopes are on the screen.

Say: These are functions. We recently learned about functions with parameters and return values.

Click for animation: Click until the library definition appears on the screen.

Say: These envelopes represent functions.

The envelopes have been grouped together in a folder. This represents a library. A library is a collection of functions that can be used in many different programs.

Let’s look inside.
Say: Let's take a look at what's inside the library. If we open up the folder, we see the functions and some documentation. A library should have documentation for each of the included functions. The documentation should include:
  • how each function works
  • a complete list of the parameters
  • what (if anything) will be returned


This detailed type of documentation is also known as Application Program Interface(API). APIs are specifications for how the functions in a library behave and can be used.
Say: Libraries allow code to be easily used and shared. Imagine if I were a cake shop owner. I might have a website for customers that would use some of this code. I might also have cash registers at my store that use this code. Or maybe I have automated the cake making process and the machines that make the cakes could use this code. Having one library that contains all of this code means that I can easily use this same code in a variety of different apps. I could even share this code with a different branch of my cake making business.
Say: You've seen libraries in action before. The Math library is built into App Lab. Notice the name of the library first, then after a dot, the name of the function and finally the parameters. This is the same formatting you will use to call functions in libraries: Library name, followed by function name, and finally the parameter(s)
Do This: Have participants navigate to U7L6 - Level 2.

Have participants follow along on their computers as you demo:
  • The functions drawer to show which functions are there and the documentation included.
  • Getting to the libraries using the gear icon



Reminder: While students do not need to use a library in their Create PT, the concept is still in the framework for AP CS Principles, so it may be tested on the AP exam. Going to this depth with libraries here also helps give students practice writing functions with parameters and return.

Unit 7 Project (18 minutes)

(1 minute) 💷 Introduce the Project

Remarks

The “Make” lesson for Libraries doubles as the end of unit project. This project asks students to make their own library which has the following: Must contain two or more functions At least one function which includes all of the following: * A loop * An if-statement * One or more parameters * Return

In addition to writing the code for a library, students submit written responses as well. This mirrors some of the requirements of the Create Performance Task.

(6 minutes) 💷 Review Project Guide

Provide participants time to look at the project guide for this project.

The Task:

  • Open the Project Guide
  • Review the requirements and the different steps students will follow in the project guide.
  • Consider what you expect a student’s project to look like at the end of this project.

Goal: Understand the requirements and process of the project.

(5 minutes) 💷 Review Exemplar

Have participants review the high-scoring exemplar found in U7L10.

The Task:

  • Open and review at the high-scoring exemplar found under “Links for the teachers” in lesson U7L10. You will open both the example app and the Planning Guide & Rubric.

Goal: Anticipate challenges your students might face when doing this project.

(6 minutes) 💷 Discussion

(2 minutes) Table Discussion Prompts

  • What surprised you about the project?
  • What support do you anticipate students will need to be successful in this project?

(4 minutes) Full Group Share Out

Decide what the best way is for the group to share out. Options might be:

  • Popcorn style share-out.
  • Whip-around the room.
  • Pull out big ideas you heard in the table discussion.
  • Focus on the second question and brainstorm ways to support students during the project.

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Session 9: Introduction to the Create Performance Task

50 minutes

discussion-based

Purpose

While participants have heard about the Create Performance Task at a high level, this session is designed to dig deeper into the task so participants understand what students are working toward during this time.

Objectives

  • Participants understand the structure and requirements of the Create Performance Task.
  • Participants gain familiarity with tasks found in the Create Performance Task Survival guide.

Supplies & Prep

Room Setup:

  • None

Facilitator Supplies:

Participant Materials:

Agenda

What is the Create Performance Task? (10 minutes)

Review the Rubric (10 minutes)

Breaking Down the Requirements (30 minutes)

Teaching Guide

What is the Create Performance Task? (10 minutes)

(3 minutes) Popcorn: What is the Create Performance Task?

💷 Prompt: What do people remember about the Create Performance Task? Popcorn around the room to collect details.

(7 minutes) 💷 Review Create Performance Task

(2 minutes) Use slide to review the basics of the Create Task, including the following:

Goal:

  • Create a program
  • Identify purpose, process, algorithm and abstraction

Process:

  • Students need twelve in class hours for the task

How it connects to the Exam

  • Is 30% of the final score

What to submit:

  • Video of running program
  • PDF of program code
  • Written Responses to prompts 3A-D

(5 minutes) 💷 Written Response Prompts

Have participants read the written response prompts starting on page 6 of the Student Handouts.

  • Participants should:
    • Jot down questions they have as they read the prompts.
    • Look for prompts that are similar to work students have done in the past in the course.
    • Anticipate which sections students may struggle with understanding.

Remarks

We know that the prompts are only part of the story. Let’s also look at the rubric for the task.

Review the Rubric (10 minutes)

(5 minutes) 💷 Read the Rubric

Have participants read the rubric, also known as the "Scoring Guidelines", focusing on the first two columns, “Reporting Category” or “Scoring Criteria” to start. As they review participants should:

  • Highlight portions of the rubric that were surprising.
  • Identify what questions these materials raise.

(5 minutes) 💷 Discussion: Generate Questions

Remarks

💷 Let’s process this together.

Prompts:

  • What aspects of the rubric or directions were surprising to you?
  • What questions does this raise for you?

Take notes in the slides as participants discuss. Make sure to note any strategies or suggestions that participants have that could be useful for future reference.

Remarks

We hope to address these questions this afternoon and give you more experience with the task in general. To start, we are going to look at the Create Performance Task Survival Guide which is found inside Unit 8. While the College Board documents are the ultimate authority on the Create Performance Task, we have pulled out some areas that students and teachers may find confusing. This may address many of your questions.

Breaking Down the Requirements (30 minutes)

Pass out physical copies of the survival guide if available. If not, have participants access the survival guide and make their own digital copy through the slides.

Remarks

💷 The Survival Guide contains an overview on the first page. The first set of activities focuses on the requirements of the program. The second set of activities help students narrow down their project. We are going to focus on the first set of activities now.

💷 (5 minutes) What is Required of My Program? (Page 2)

Have participants read the summary of the program requirements on page 2. The goal of this section should be to highlight the four takeaways in the Survival Guide.

Remarks

Based on these four takeaways, it's clear that students have a lot of freedom in deciding how to design their program. But students really understand the third requirement about our functions, since that one is the most complicated. That may influence their project choice.

(15 minutes) 💷 Function Requirement Activity 1 - Does It Count? (Pages 3-4)

Ask participants to complete the activity on page 3, using the scoring guidelines on page 4. For each of the provided algorithms they need to decide whether the function would earn each row. Give participants roughly 10 minutes to score each of the functions and then take 5 minutes to discuss their work and the main takeaways from this activity.

Discussion Goal

The main takeaways from this activity should be:

  • Some "complicated" looking functions may still not earn both rows if they are missing a component.
  • Two functions may look very similar but because of small differences one will earn full credit while the other will not.
  • The task only includes 6 total points which are graded quickly by a very specific rubric. Knowing what the graders will be looking for gives students the best chance to demonstrate what they know. Use the Create Performance Task Survival Guide - KEY for commentary on individual algorithms.

Discuss: Have participants share and compare their responses with a partner. Afterwards lead a discussion on the patterns they see.

(10 minutes) 💷 Function Requirements Activity 2 - Two Function Calls (Page 5)

Ask participants to complete the activity on page 5. This activity asks them to think through the different ways students might respond to response 3D. Students should brainstorm two possible arguments that could be used with the provided functions. They should then identify the condition that will run differently in each case and the ways the functions will run differently as a result.

Discussion Goal

This activity is designed to help students anticipate how they'll need to respond to prompt 3D and potentially make some decisions about how to design their functions. Here's some things they may notice:

  • It is much more straightforward to answer the question in the second example since the parameter is being used directly in the conditional statement.
  • In either case students should come up with example arguments that run differently from one another.

Discuss: Have participants share and compare their responses with a partner. Afterwards lead a discussion on the patterns they see.

Remarks

When we come back, we are going to practice grading some example projects together. Now that you better understand different parts of the task, we are going to put it all together to make sense of the entire task.

If you are interested in licensing Code.org materials for commercial purposes, contact us.

If you are interested in licensing Code.org materials for commercial purposes, contact us.

Session 11: Planning for the Create Performance Task

75 minutes

discussion-based

Purpose

This session is broken up into two key parts:

  1. Practice grading Create Performance Tasks using the College Board rubric and knowledge from the previous session.
  2. Creating a plan for supporting students before or during the Create Performance Task.

By doing this in community with other computer science teachers, participants will be able to bounce ideas off one another during this session.

Objectives

  • Participants understand how to support students in selecting a project and function for the Create Performance Task prior to starting the Create PT in class.
  • Participants understand how the rubric will be applied to the Create Performance Task
  • Participants understand what is needed to successfully complete the Create Performance Task

Supplies & Prep

Room Setup:

  • None

Facilitator Supplies:

  • None

Participant Materials

Agenda

Scoring Sample Work (40 minutes)

Energizer! (5 minutes)

Resources for the Create Performance Task (5 minutes)

Planning for the Create Performance Task (25 minutes)

Teaching Guide

Scoring Sample Work (40 minutes)

(20 minutes) 💷 Table Scoring

Facilitator Tip

In U8L1, there are three examples given, but participants will only use two for this task. Also, you will see linked “Annotated Samples” in the “Links for the teachers” section of the lesson. Encourage participants to first go through both samples themselves. They will go over the “answers” at the end.

Have teachers work with their table to score Create PT Samples 1 and 2 found in U8L1. Participants should open up the video and the written response (WR).

While scoring the samples, be sure to jot down:

  • The score for each row.
  • Why are you giving them the score?
  • What are they missing?

💷 After they are done scoring each sample, each group should add an X to the chart in the slides (also pictured below) if they gave the sample the point for a given row in the rubric.

(20 minutes) 💷 Share Out and Discussion

(4 minutes) Discussion

Use the chart described above to collect and record each table’s scoring for their samples. Cover the following questions during your discussion:

  • Do we all agree on scores?
  • Did we agree on what was present or missing?
  • What do we disagree on?

(10 minutes) 💷 Sample Answers

Give participants 10 minutes to look at the “answers” to the task by reviewing the annotated samples linked in the U8L1 lesson plan.

What happens if I don't know the answer?

Answer the AP-related questions the best you can. Refer to the College Board materials whenever possible, but if a question comes up that you are not sure of, point participants to the College Board forum for more official answers from the College Board representatives.

(5 minutes) 💷 Discussion

  • What insights do you have about how the rubric was applied?
  • What questions do you have about how the rubric was applied by the College Board?

(1 minute) 💷 Wrap Up

Have participants write down 1-2 takeaways they will want to stress with students now that they have seen the task in its entirety.

Energizer! (5 minutes)

Facilitator Tip

Watching a video, even a funny one or heartfelt one, is not an energizer. We want to get people to move here.

💷 This is an optional, but encouraged ACTIVE, brain break or energizer. Looking at all the College Board documents can produce some anxiety or stress for participants. Taking a few minutes for a brain break can help with this second part of the session. Some examples include:

Anything where participants are up, moving, and engaged is great! You can also find videos of how these energizers work if that helps you envision them. Alternatively, if you have your favorite energizer, or one you really want to try yourself, do it! Then share it in the Facilitator Slack Channel!

Resources for the Create Performance Task (5 minutes)

💷 Use the slides to describe what is included in Unit 8. Include:

  • What work was done prior to Unit 8 to help students prepare.
  • U8L1 includes 3 examples for students to practice grading.
  • U8L2 and U8L3 include the Survival Guide in order to take a Deep Dive of the Create Performance Task and then make a plan for work.
  • The rest of the unit is dedicated for the 12 hours students are spent working on the Create Performance Task.
    • It is important to note what the teacher is and is not able to do during the Create Performance Task. We are covering that next.

Planning for the Create Performance Task (25 minutes)

(5 minutes) 💷 Investigating the Teacher’s Role in the Guidelines

Give participants time to read 169-171 in the CS Principles Course and Exam Description 2021 to understand the teacher's role on the Create Performance Task. Again, participants should be looking to highlight information that is surprising to them and what questions they have.

💷 (5 minutes) Share Out

As a group share out:

  • What you noticed when reading these guidelines?
  • What are the things you can and cannot do before and during the task?
  • What questions do you have after reading this?

💷 Return to the AP Computer Science Principles Policy on Plagiarism on page 169. Highlight that all students’ work should be obviously their own when it comes to the written responses.

Remarks

Remember that students’ written responses to prompts should be original and written by the student. Collaboration is not allowed on the written responses, and the College Board specifies that, “The student’s individual voice should be clearly evident.”

(10 minutes) 💷 Create Your Plan

Remarks

The next 10 minutes are yours to make a plan for getting to the Create Task.

Do This:

  1. Review any resources you would like to spend more time with such as:
    • Sample 3 in U8L1
    • Part 2 of the Create PT Survival Guide
  2. Consider the following questions:
    • How will I use the existing projects in the curriculum to help prepare students for the Create PT?
    • How can I help students keep their projects within the scope of what is needed for the Create Task?
    • What other ways do I plan to support students prior to the Create PT?
    • What structures/tools will you use to help support students in uploading their tasks to the College Board?

Participants can work with partners or tables as they make their plan

(5 minutes) 💷 Share Out

Use this time to share plans in the room. Use this time to also address questions that haven’t been answered at this point.

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Session 12: Wrap Up

15 minutes

facilitator presentation

Purpose

Answer any outstanding questions and wrap up the day.

In addition it should give time to do the survey in person so that teachers complete it before leaving.

Objectives

  • Remaining parking lot or needs questions have been addressed
  • Participants have taken the survey

Supplies & Prep

Room Setup:

  • None

Facilitator Supplies:

Participant Materials:

  • Computers

Agenda

Parking Lot and Reminders (5 minutes)

Survey (10 minutes)

Teaching Guide

Parking Lot and Reminders (5 minutes)

(3 minutes) 💷 Clear the Question Parking Lot

Use this time to address outstanding question parking lot issues. Don't hesitate to give items from the parking lot back out to the group to answer.

(2 minutes) 💷 Reminders

Consider adding any helpful reminders for teachers such as when the next workshop is or other local computer science related events.

Survey (10 minutes)

(10 minutes) 💷 Complete Survey

  • Show the slide at the end of the deck that includes the appropriate link based on your in-person workshop model (in-person, 1-day OR in-person, 2-day).
  • Make sure all the teachers in your workshop take the survey for the workshop before they leave.
  • On the online workshop dashboard find your workshop and close the workshop during the closing of an in-person, 1-day OR during the final closing of an in-person, 2-day workshop.

Having trouble with the survey?

If your participants get an error message when you share the survey link, please follow these steps:

  1. Don’t worry! This is likely an issue with how the workshop was scheduled in the dashboard.
  2. Ask your participants to take a few minutes to share their "gots and needs" via post-it notes. This will allow you to receive quick feedback to inform your post-workshop debrief.
  3. Let participants know the survey will be coming via email within a few days, and send participants home for the day.
  4. Contact your Regional Partner to let them know the survey link didn’t work, and ask the Regional Partner to follow-up with Code.org on the next business day.
  5. Code.org will work with Regional Partner to send the survey link to teachers.

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