Curriculum Ideas

Tips and Tricks 

(From Current Teachers and My Own Experiences)

• • Students like competition so try to make things games when possible. Be careful with too much competition though.

  • Make checklists to help guide students as they get used to new ideas.

  • Create warm up exercises that students can do to practice a new skill from previous class

  • Get a computer science class that does once a week community service to come in and teach students fun things about computer science as role models for them to look up to 

  • Use a language created to be a learning tool to show programming and then make the connections to a real language (example in scratch the green flag is like the main method)

  • Create ways for students to interact with the computer and programming through other means than the keyboard

  • Put up a daily agenda to help students understand the plan for the day

  • Collaboration is a great way for students to learn

  • Consider a backwards classroom model

  • Program correctness should not be the most important piece we want to nurture creativity, foster learning and hard work

When Designing Assignments Consider:

• • Make it useful

  • Make it personal or local

  • Interface with other programs as possible

  • Use big data

  • Use real-world problems

  • Use natural language text

  • Make it sensory (graphics, audio, animation, manipulation)

  • Make it socially relevant

  • Simulate real systems

  • Include observations of the real world

  • Bring in experts

  • Illustrate how everyday computational objects work 

Lesson Ideas And Lesson Plans