Session 6: Lesson Exploration - Lists Practice - U5L3
20 minutes
lesson-exploration
Purpose
This session allows for participants to deepen their understanding of Lists and also apply their thinking around influencing students’ academic status in the classroom. Once again, we are spending a bit more time on content here since lists will be used throughout this unit and will be needed in the following workshop when we discuss the Create Performance Task
Objectives
- Participants understand the content in the List Practice lesson.
- Participants are able to identify skills they anticipate students will use in a lesson.
Supplies & Prep
Room Setup:
- None
Facilitator Supplies:
Participant Materials:
- Computer
- Journals
Agenda
Get to Know the Lists Practice Lesson (11 minutes)
Discussion (9 minutes)
Facilitation Guide
Get to Know the Lists Practice Lesson (11 minutes)
(1 minute) 💷 Set the Scene
Remarks
Next, we are going to take a look at the Practice lesson for lists. As you start, think about what skills you anticipate students may use while doing this lesson. Think broadly about skills - these might be skills like looking back at past code to make sense of a problem or even using a specific debugging tool. There are lots of skills students bring to the classroom each day. As you look at this lesson, consider what those skills are that students would use in this specific lesson.
(10 minutes) Exploration Task
💷 Do this:
- Read the teaching tips in the U5L3 lesson plan.
- Review the slides for the lesson.
- Open Code Studio and complete levels 3 through 7.
- Consider:
- What are the skills students might exhibit that are valuable to learning processes during this lesson?
- What skills do you want to highlight?
Have participants complete the task for about 10 minutes.
Discussion (9 minutes)
Facilitator Tip
You will notice we put “smart” in quotes throughout this workshop. We use this word a lot in society, but in education we know there are multiple intelligences and not just one way to be “smart”. We acknowledge that status can change over time - throughout the year or throughout the class period.
This video on Building Equitable Classrooms by Rachel Lotan from the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education is a great overview of what this looks like in the classroom. Consider watching this before facilitating this session as background context for you, and not necessarily for participants.
(2 minutes) 💷 Journal
Prompts:
- What does “being smart” in a CS classroom look like, broadly speaking? What are the skills students may exhibit that show them “being smart” in CS?
- How can you see those skills being useful in this lesson?
(2 minutes) Table Share Out
Share your lists with people at the table. Add to your list.
(4 minutes) Think - Pair
💷 Prompts:
- Think about your students in your classroom. Who is a student who you would like to support in building their sense of academic capabilities in your classroom?
- What skills have you seen them exhibit in class in the past? How might you “catch them being smart”?
💷 Share with a partner:
- Tell your partner about this student. Why did you select them? What have you seen them do in the past that maybe went under-recognized?
Wrap Up
Remarks
While our perspective and a student’s perspective about their academic status may vary, providing positive reinforcement for our students helps to make our classrooms feel accessible and inclusive.
Our challenge to you is to try to catch the student you just thought about “being smart” in your classroom over the next few weeks and acknowledge their contribution publicly. How we interact with our students can influence their academic status in the classroom as well as their own self-image. It can be easy to acknowledge students’ achievement in the classroom, and that can be a good thing. Students might make a really great app over the weekend and show it to you on that Monday and get an “academic status boost” if you publicly remark about it in the class.
As we think about equity in the classroom, we want to think of the multiple ways students can “be smart” in the CS classrooms and recognize the variety of ways students can intellectually contribute to the learning process in the classroom. This way, when we recruit students to the classroom, we can help them feel motivated to stay and pursue CS.