When I enter a classroom, one of the first things I notice are posters and wall decoration.  In math classrooms, you will see instructional posters with formulas or shapes  and the order of operations.  You may also see inspirational posters about determination or cool math patterns seen in the world.  In a language arts classroom you will see posters on verbs and nouns, facts and opinions, and cause and effect.  In a foreign language classroom there are posters that labeling the classroom with the equivalent foreign language word.  These posters act as visual reminders and clue for students.  With a class that requires students to assimilate a ton of new vocabulary as well as remembering programming structure, a few posters may be helpful.  

Look for posters on computer science, and they are few and far between. Mainly I find posters on hardware or inspirational posters about careers. These are great.  But I want posters on what I'm teaching.  I want posters that show examples of lines of code.  I want specifically... Java posters. 

So, I've taken my classroom back to elementary school. Besides, we are teaching students everything they need to know about programming and many have no prior knowledge. A little like elementary school.  Walk into any elementary classroom, and there is not a bare spot on the wall. The walls are covered in clues that help students learn the new material.  My classroom is becoming much the same. I purchased large posters that resemble notebook paper and developed a basic class outline for students to follow.  I purchased some wide sentence strips that allowed me to write a single line statements such as how to create an instance of an object or to list the primitive data types. 

The feedback from my students has been very positive. They don't have to dig through their notes to find the structure of something we just learned, and over time, they stop having to look at the posters, and just know the material. I have inspirational posters in my room as well, but these instructional posters, truly let people know what we do in my room.  We aren't just playing games, or making PowerPoint presentations, we are writing programming code.

I'm a little fired up tonight.  I should be using my weekend to catch up on some chores: fold the laundry, wash the floor, make my bed.  I should be working on grading some papers. I was hoping to be able to get around to writing some curriculum that I'm working on or aligning our state IDT standards to ECS. All these are on my to do list and I had promised myself that this was going to be a productive weekend.  Well, this blog post just couldn't wait. I don't have all the answers nor have I done any real research on this topic, none the less, I hope that you chime in with your opinion. 

It all started with a quiet game of Moncala with my 5 year old daughter Emelia. We have a wooden Moncala set with real stones and sat at the kitchen table to play.  It is Saturday night, and our children have declared Saturday night game night. Great idea!  It is just Emelia and I this weekend, so we played Moncala instead of the traditional family game of Monopoly.  I usually win more than I lose when playing any games with my kids.  I don't believe in letting them win. I'll give them tips along the way, but only after they've made a bad decision. They can learn from it for next time, but I'm not playing to lose. I play to win!!! Always have. Sorry kids. Well tonight, I lost. Not once, not 1/2 the games.  I lost 5 out of 6 games to my 5 year old!!! She was strategic in her playing.  She was thoughtful.  She lost the second game to me and was determine that I wasn't going to win any more games. She was a problem solver, a mathematician. I told her as much.  I said, "You are a great strategic player and that is going to make you an excellent problem solver someday." 

I bragged on my child on Facebook, and included the fact that she is being seen as average in her class.  All satisfactory on her report card, no excellent.  I know what people are thinking. I'm just one of those Mom's who thinks my kid is great. Everyone thinks their kid deserves all E's. Someone mentioned, maybe she just doesn't apply it at school.  I don't think so.  Well, that isn't why I'm upset.  I know kindergarten grades don't mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, or do they?

This past week, I started recruiting for AP CS A. I utilize AP Potential which is accessed through the collegeboard.  AP Potential uses PSAT data to determine a student's likelihood of passing an AP exam.  I've used this process for many years, but this is the first time that I was so struck by the fact that out of the 158 students identified as having 70% potential of scoring a 3, 4 or 5 on the AP Computer Science A exam, only 60 of them were female. How am I supposed to build a class with a 50 / 50 ratio of girls to boys when my pool is only about 37 / 63? And what data are they using? Math and English scores. So this means that females are not only being left behind in the field of CS, but also potentially math and English. This is why I say, lack of females in CS is a symptom of a much larger problem. 

So, I wonder, where does this start? I have 3 children, 2 boys and 1 girl. I will admit that teacher conferences are dreaded at our house.  We don't want to hear again how our boys call out answers, and the long list of other behavioral grievances their teachers have, all nicely sandwiched together between glowing comments about how smart they both are.  Our boys are both in the gifted program scoring very high marks on standardized tests in both math and language arts as well as science. Our older son is in both advance math and advanced language arts. These advanced classes have helped to keep them engaged in school so that the behavior is tolerable. As parents we are grateful. As an educator, I know that the odds that I had 2 gifted kids and 1 average kid is not likely.

Teacher conferences for our daughter have been very different. Pleasant actually.  We had conferences about her in preschool and in kindergarten. We delight in the fact that she is so well liked by her peers and teachers. That she is helpful and sweet. She is dependable and often asked to help the teacher distribute papers or complete other tasks. She's a doll! We think so too, but she is also smart.  She potty trained herself at 22 months old, and was speaking in full sentences while her peers grunted and learned sign language to communicate. She taught herself to tie shoes when she didn't even have any shoes of her own to tie. She is excellent at math. She is creative and tells the most detailed and elaborate stories. And lets not forget how she just creamed in 5 games of Moncala. But her brilliance is not recognized because in comparison to her brothers, she, like most girls, is compliant. Always has been. 

Are our daughters missing out because they are too compliant? too nurturing? too mature? As an educator, we know that when students are bored, they get into trouble.  To this end boys are offered extra challenges to occupy them when they have completed tasks early. Girls are asked to pass back papers. Could this be the root of a much bigger problem? Is the message we are sending one that communicates subconsciously to girls that they are not smart enough for these challenges? 

Every year I compile a list of important tips that I want to take back to my students from my experience at the AP reading.  A lot of these are small tips, sometimes common sense tips, that can really help students earn points, and frankly (my concern this week), save readers lots of headaches.  Here are a few, feel free to add your own.

- Hand writing – write neatly. Even if you have really nice cursive, please PRINT. Make a distinction between upper and lowercase letters.  Since there is a Double class, this is different from double.

- Use identifiers that are meaningful. This helps your reader. They shouldn’t be too terribly long either though. Not only does it help us to read and rate the solution, it will help your students to not get confused in their answers and accidentally use the wrong variable name.  And there are times to reuse identifiers and they should be reused, and there are times not too.  If you have 2 loops that are working differently to loop over the columns in GridWorld, it might be OK to reuse your “col” variable. However, you need to avoid reusing variables when they have different meanings. So at the beginning of the code, it was a counter, and now it is an accumulator.  Sometimes this has an unforeseen side effect that you are penalized for, especially if you end up inadvertently using previously stored data.

- Avoid using i and j as variable names.  They look too much alike first of all, and j look like a semicolon ;  Use something meaningful (count, row, col or Bob’s favorite lcv).

- Emphasis the difference between for and for each loops and when to use each.

- Students shouldn’t try to be tricky.  Who are they showing off for? They don’t know me, and I don’t know them.  Their tricky code is only going to get them into trouble.  Be straight forward .

- Read and know what you have for instance variables. Students should circle these, or underline them.  When I first start looking at free response questions with students, I always ask, what are the instance variables for this problem? What are the parameters?  If they are writing solutions that do not use the parameters, their solution is horribly misguided.  And the problem probably wouldn’t have an instance variable if you weren’t supposed to use it somewhere.

-  Watch your return types, and be sure to include returns when needed. Remember void methods and constructors should not have returns.

Can you add to this list?

Thanks

Crystal

If your school is anything like my school, May is a CRAZY month.  It is full of testing.  End of Course Tests, AP Tests, post tests, final exams.... We even have a special calendar for the month of May to help us coordinate these tests while trying to squeeze in instruction and review.

For many of the days between now and the end of school, we are on a block schedule, meeting with 3 classes each day.  But we are a 7 period a day school usually, so we have had to include days like today to be sure that we are meeting with all our classes the same number of minutes every week. Today's schedule goes something like this: 1, 2, 3 periods meet for 20 minutes, 5 meets for 2 hours, and has lunch, 4 and then 6 periods, are normal and then students go back to 5th. Our LSTC who created the schedule is simply amazing and AWESOME. I applaud her for creating a schedule that ensures that our instruction time is preserved at a time when tests are ruling!  It isn't pretty, but she has taken our testing lemons, and has made palatable lemonaide.  :)

So, where does that leave my AP Computer Science A students who are finished with their AP exam? Some days we will meet for 2 hours, some days not at all.  Students who take other AP exams will not be in class.  How do you get ANYTHING meaningful and productive accomplished with such a crazy schedule and only a week and 1/2 before final exams start?

When I taught AP Computer Science A in NY, our situation was a little different.  First of all, the school year wasn't over until the end of June, so we had about 6 weeks between the AP exam and the end of the year.  And our school was very small, we only offered 4 AP classes, so the students weren't out taking tests for 2 weeks. Post AP was an issue as it related to motivation, but it was easier to deal with, because we did have a large chunk of time that allowed us to do further study into AB level topics, or to complete a LARGE project together.

Solution: Post-Ap Projects
My students are starting their post-ap projects today. Our final exams are broken up into 2 pieces; objective and performance.  Each part is worth 10% of the student's average.  The post-ap project will count as my students' performance exam.  So it is a BIG deal!

Students were provided with an outline of this project at the beginning of 2nd semester so that they could begin thinking about what they wanted to do. I also encouraged them to start working through the coursera self-study for Computer Science 101 to help them review early material taught in our course.  Some students choose to compete in the STEM Modeling Challenge, which began in January. These early starters have been keeping logs of their progress throughout these projects.

Since not all students' schedules will be the same over the next 8 days, the Post-AP project will be more of an independent study, with each student keeping a daily log of their progress. The goal is for them to apply and learn something with the little time we have left, and their documentation is evidence of their use of time.  The emphasis is not on completing a large project, but on applying their knowledge and learning something new.

Students are allowed to work alone or in small groups, but each person is responsible for their own log.  Students are presented with the following options: finch robots, Alice, Scratch, Greenfoot, Python, coursera course, android cell phones or another project that the student proposes for approval.

Every year, students email me about how beneficial the post-AP project has been for them once they are in college. Those who study Python, now know another language.  They are the experts in their college classrooms and making A's.  This project definitely gives these last few days purpose. 

What are you doing with your students after the AP exam?

Enjoy!
Crystal

Recently, I sought out approval to offer 6 online review sessions for AP Computer Science students across our county.  Working in conjunction with Stephanie Arrington from Parkview HS and other AP CS teachers throughout the county, we were able to advertise these session and prepare hour long review sessions over a period of 3 weeks. We can not wait for the AP scores to come in so that we can see how these sessions have benefited students. 

The process started with a proposal that was sent to our county department chair. The proposal included the use of Blackboard collaborate to offer review on the following topic: Array, ArrayList, 2D Array; Object Oriented Programming; Recursion and Loop Tracing; GridWorld Parts 1- 3; GridWorld Part 4; and Testing Tips and Free Response.  We were granted permission to move forward. 

Advertising was handled through the classroom teacher and posted on our county Technical Education webpage.  We encouraged teachers to attend sessions with their students, because this lends an element of credibility to the sessions.  In addition, we encouraged teachers to give students an incentive for attending. Each teacher was provided with a link to a registration survey for students to complete.  Students were asked for their name, school, teacher, email and which session they would be willing to attend.  A week before the session started, students were emailed the link and reminded to attend.  Teachers also posted the information on their webpages. As students began to register, I encouraged school rivalry, by sending emails out thanking those teachers who have gotten their students to register.  This seemed to work very well. In the end 218 students and their teachers registered for these sessions. 

Stephanie and I planned lessons together that included about 5 multiple choice warm up questions, instruction and a free response. We took turns presenting the sessions and running all the behind the scene tasks. While one person presented the other person, started the recordings, took attendance - once at the start and once at the end, and most importantly answered student questions that were entered into the chat window.  Along the way, they would flag the presenter when clarification was needed. 

During the session, another one of our stellar teachers, Karen Curtis of Collins Hill, created an assignment for students who were watching the recordings. These were distributed to teachers so that students could watch the sessions, answer the questions and prove that the session was viewed.  The questions ranged from content, to tips that were provided during the session, and even mistakes that the presenters made.... students truly had to watch the recording to answer the questions.

What struck me most about doing these sessions, was how enthusiastic both the students and teachers were at attending them.  If the students' teacher was not in attendance, students remarked, "where is _________ tonight".  They really appreciated their teachers taking time in the evening to spend with them. All the teachers pitched in to answer questions and to help keep the students on track.  On one occasion when Mrs. Curtis was unable to attend, Ray Parsons from Gwinnett School of Math, Science and Technology filled in for her.  I am so impressed with our teachers and their dedication.  I feel blessed that I have the privilege to work with such awesome people. 


Challenges

We did have some challenges implementing these sessions. And will make improvements for next year. 

One challenge / blessing was the sheer number of students who attended. The first several sessions we had over 100 students.  About mid way through, the attendance tapered off to about 70.  When there were 100 students, it made managing the session very difficult.  We had to establish some norms for how they behaved in the session. 

• We removed their ability to draw on the whiteboard.
• We encouraged them to be sure their conversations were school appropriate and reminded them that these sessions were recorded. 
• We had to remind students to not have side conversations during the session, because this made keeping up with questions very difficult.  The chat window in collaborate scrolls each time a student enters a post, so it is very hard to scroll up and see what someone has posted. 
• We utilized the polling so that students were not entered answers into the chat. 
• Instructed them to use the emoticons that were next to their name vs. posting smile faces into the chat box. 

All in all, students behaved themselves very well without too much redirection.

Drop in Attendance


We did see a decline in attendance over time.  Some of this could be attributed to a lack of email reminders and activities at local schools. This is a busy time of year for schools with award banquets, prom, etc.  After the first few sessions, we didn't send emails every time because there were so many email addresses that it made using web mail very difficult.  At first we didn't realize how vital these emails were, because the link didn't change from week to week. But not all students realized that they could use the same link, and so they didn't attend. We will be sure to send email reminders prior to each session. We could also utilize remind101 to have students sign up to receive text reminders. This service would allow us to schedule reminders  ahead of time, to be sent the day of the review. Many of our students are more apt to pay attention to a text then they are to look at email. 

Incentives for Students

Each teacher handled this incentive in their own way. Several required students to attend and complete an assignment that was graded. Sessions were recorded, so if a student couldn't attend, they were still able to get credit by watching the recording and turning in the assignment. Others gave drop grades or extra credit for attendance. 

Follow up
We will be sending students a follow up survey about these review sessions.  We would like to know what they liked? What they thought was most helpful? What they would like to see more of? What they didn't like? What they thought we could cut out? We are also curious to see if the number of session and topics were appropriate.  Would students like more sessions? Or fewer? What additional topics would they like to see offered? 

Conclusion
This was a huge success! Beyond anything I expected. We have about 400 students enrolled in AP CS A across our county and we had 1/4 of them attending on a regular basis. I mark this in the success column. The students and teachers were great.  And best of all the sessions were free to them!

We will DEFINITELY be looking at offering these again next year.  In the mean time, teachers are planning to utilize the recordings in their classrooms. 

Click here for recordings.

Crystal L. Furman