Monday, August 14, 2017

First Day of School Plans

Here's my contribution to the #iTeachCS movement for the time being!  Following #MTBoS, I decided to write about what I will do my first day of school.

My goals for the first day are to:

  1. Talk as little as possible and have students talk as much as possible
  2. Learn names
  3. Build norms
With those goals in mind, here is the plan!


Everyone will make name plates - I did this last year and enjoyed reading what students wrote and it helped me practice names for the first week.  On the back, students write something they want me to know.  Read the blog post linked above for all the details, but here is my link to the document I used with students last year.

For AP CSA:
I am going to start students with a puzzle activity.  I did this last year as well and it went well.  Essentially students get a 100 piece puzzle for a group of 4 and they have to put it together in a short amount of time.  Afterwards we talk about what skills and strategies they had to use individually and when working with other people.  This gets folded into developing norms.  Last year, it looked like this:


Lots of movement, talking, thinking, etc.

This year, I think I am going transition from this, to logic puzzles.  From a facebook post someone posted a few logic problems.  My goal here is for students to reflect further on the norms they have set for themselves and also introduce the idea that we are going to encounter a lot of problems in class and after a while, we are going to start to develop strategies that are common across problems.  I am going to start this burning rope brain teaser and then have students do this hour glass problem - both of these are related so students should be able to see how the strategy could be re-used for #2.  If there is time we will do a problem about soldiers crossing a river brain teaser and then the animals crossing the river  which again are related.  I plan to continue to reinforce the norms during this time too.



For AP CSP and Concepts of Advanced Algebra:
I am borrowing from code.org's CSD curriculum and going to have students build boats to hold coins. You fan find the complete lesson plan here, but essentially it is a hands-on and collaborative activity for students that will force them to problem solve.  From here we will generate norms using post-its and then share out these norms as a class.  From there, we will reduce the norms down to 3-4 ways we will interact with one another in class.



Then on day 2...
Everyone will make a Flip Grid saying their name, 3 hobbies they have, 2 words their friends would use to describe them, and 1 reason they took this course... From there, we will dive into our content!  I want to use Flip Grid to get to know students and practice name/face recognition at home.

I'd love to hear everyone else's plans!

3 comments:

  1. I like the idea of physical puzzles. I plan to do a variety of puzzles over the first few weeks. I want students to practice some critical thinking and problem solving before jumping into java. I have some find the match puzzles to highlight the need to pay attention to detail.

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  2. I used to do the boats with coins activity with parents when I taught eighth grade science! It is a really fun activity, and doable in a very short amount of time.

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    1. Good to know! I was worried I wouldn't have time to do norming also in the hour so I am glad you found it went fast!

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