Sidewalk Chalk

Quote of the day: "It was one of those fight or flight things, and you cant fight a mouse." 12th grader explaining why he ran from a mouse.

We had a four legged mouse in the lab today, tiny and cute, but its gotta go. The kids have already named it Billy and want to keep it.

Considering this week started with 7 inches of snow and today it is 80 degrees they have been a bit off the walls, even without rodents.

So, for the CS Principles class we went outside today. Weve been working on Algorithm design (Big Idea # 4). To work on this we did sidewalk art. each team was given a copy of a lab we will program in C++ next month, and using pseudo-code they had to plan out a solution. We havent done ifs or loops in C++ yet, but they all came up with a correct algorithm for solving the problem.

We started this fall with BYOB Scratch, and they seem to be doing much better this year with using methods in designing their programs. They all got exactly how to call existing methods to find the solution. I am looking forward to seeing if how their labs compare to previous years students after drawing out their plans.

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Computer Science Recipe Sidewalk Chalk Prototyping

We do this while the kids are working on their Programming Portfolios in the APCS Principles class. We pick a sunny day early on when they start this portfolio and head outside.

Ingredients:

• Markers
• Blank Paper
• Sidewalk chalk - feeling crafty? Heres a recipe
• Sidewalk

Steps:
The Portfolio for Programming is a partner project. A lot of the writing they will have to do will analyze how the program came together. It is helpful for teh students to stop and draw out the program so they have a clear mental piture of what it is supposed to do.

At the beginning of class I give each pair some paper and markers.  I ask them to draw a picture of what their program does. They can illustrate it anyway they want, but no words.

I then have them do an elevator speech and present their drawing to the class. They have 30 second to give a snapshot of what they are working on.

Towards the end of class we head outside. For this drawing they are illustrating how they will create the program they described. I do not give any structure to this.

We then do a chalk walk and each team describes how they plan on solving the problem.

The main point is to get them really describing what the program does and how they intend to get there.

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Chalk Talk

We just finished Algorithms and methods last week. I focused on the connection between using methods in C++ and designing good algorithms to solve problems. This is a change, this year I introduced methods before we did ifs and loops. My thinking is if the students start by using sub routines we dont have to undo bad habits later. So far it has gone very well.

We did BYOB - Scratch right before Winter Break to move from learning about the Internet to programming. Nice (and unplanned) side effect, it has made methods in C++ much easier for the students. I wish I had designed this nice transition. The reality was that day two of methods one of the kids turned around and yelled across the room "This isnt hard - its just like all those blocks we did in Scratch before Christmas".

Well, duh.

Sidewalk Chalk

So the Friday before the test we had one of those days. Any public school teacher knows those days. I lost power to 1/3 of the lab (future reference the breaker box is in the boiler room, panel 4). And a mouse, four-legged kind. A very active mouse.

There is a point where no matter how beautiful your lesson plans are, you just have to dump and run. Kids were distracted and we really couldnt do our computer practice. So we went outside.

I borrowed some chalk and put the kids in teams of three. I gave each group a copy of the lab well do at the end of next unit. The lab has them design methods for a calendar program. They have to count the number of days left in a month, return the total number of days in a month, then using these they have to count the total number of days between two dates.

We havent done ifs or loops yet, so this is not something they could code in C++, but I was curious to see how they did. They each had to sketch out an algorithms they could use to find a solution.

The solutions were great. Every group figured out that they could use the first two methods in a loop to count the days. This is a program I have done in the past with students and they often struggle with this concept. I am curious to see if the coding is easier this year.

And the mouse is gone- I caught in a cup later that day and he was released back into the garden.

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