Classroom Posters & Thoughts on Belonging

A while ago, the Never The Less podcast released a series of beautiful Women in STEM posters. I already had a set of Code.org posters, but these ones were just beautiful and full of people I had rarely heard of before. I convinced my school to print several copies of them for me to hang...

Game Design Final Projects

Before the long blog post reflecting & dissecting how this all went, here are the final projects from my students if you wanted to play a few of them first. They're pretty cool. This is my second year teaching an introductory Computer Science class, mostly following the curricula provided by Code.org's CS Discoveries class. Last...

Shark Tank: An Explore PT Practice Task

For the third year in a row, I've done a Shark Tank project with my AP CS Principles classes as their Semester 1 final exam. After 3 years of messing around with it, it feels worthwhile enough to share out. The genesis for this project came from the AP CS Principles Explore Performance Task. When...

Concept Map Gallery Walk – Internet Version

My AP Computer Science Principles class is finishing up our first unit on how the Internet works. For the last few years I've usually ended this unit with a homework assignment that helps them prepare for a test. But this year I've been trying to assign less homework and instead find ways to work those...

Mistakes Gallery Walk

I've been exploring lots of ways to have students engage with code & syntax without actually writing code & syntax. One of the strategies I've been investigating is getting students to interact with mistakes, hopefully making them better debuggers and getting them to think critically about the grammar rules of syntax rather than the results....

3D Printing Projects

I taught two new preps this year - Computer Science Discoveries through Code.org and an Electronics class where I had the freedom to explore different curricula and activities to teach circuits and microprocessors. My school had also purchased a 3D printer that I could use in my classes, so I decided to try a few lessons...

Logic Gates With Posters & Post-Its

One of the more isolated standards in the AP Computer Science Principles framework is 2.2.3F: A Logic Gate is a hardware abstraction that is modeled with a Boolean function. I find it super tricky to find a place in the curriculum to teach this without it feeling like a diversion from whatever unit or topic...