A syllabus or a teaching plan for CS?
Is there a syllabus or a teaching plan for a computer programming class? If yes, then where exactly can I find it?
Hi gindafm,what is the age level of your students, and how many hours a week, and weeks will your students be spending on the project? How much homework will they have to expect?
While there is no official content that you cannot find by searching for it on the site - no secret teacher manual, it may be possible to suggest different approaches depending on the circumstances under which you teach.
My apologies for the delay to reply.
Hi, I have never taught this before and, I have never come up with any idea of how it works. Its just the feeling we have as a youth organisation to train coding to fellow African youths. I thought the site had something that I could build on. I mean to say that the questions you asked me are very close to the questions i wanted to ask on this site.
Do you have any suggestions or ideas? Please I will be very glad to hear them.
I believe that for children younger than 12, you should start out with Hour of code, but expect to spend more than 1 hour on each Hour of code 2 hours is probably more realistic, although some may finish well before that. It partially depends on how much they are enjoying it, because if they are enthusiastic they may spend (much) more time embellishing their projects, while those less caught up with the spirit may get restless sooner.
If you have two students sharing the computer you should also allow extra time so both have a decent period on the computer.
If they go on to Intro to JS there will be some repetition at the start, but if you supply other projects that does not really matter.
For older children I'd go straight to Intro to JS, drawing and animation. Most children will be more impressed by this than by HTML/CSS because there are so many web pages were you do not have to know any HTML/CSS to get a good looking site.
I don't know if you plan to do any teaching, except for to be around and support the kids. They would definitely benefit from doing more than the official exercises and projects. If I were teaching I would be showing some of the other code in the Documentation and create additional projects. At least one such extra project for each new video talk through. Try to suggest something they can relate to, like "Decorate a cake" or and "Design a ticket for your favorite sport event", or "Motivational quotes" in addition to As Design.
I do not recommend that you make any sessions shorter than 1 hour, even if some projects and exercises can be solved very quickly if the user only wants to pass. That would definitely not be enough when they progress to more complicated programs. 1 hour sessions will eventually feel very disjointed, which is why I think two hours, or minimum 1 hour 30 minutes is much more realistic.
I would also give them the occasional exercise where they write their programs on paper, to help them not to rely too much on OhNoes, but that's me...
If it is a youth club I would not expect the students to do homework, but some youth clubs are based on children doing some work on their own. Hopefully some of the students will want to code at home, but there may be limitations on equipment and Internet access which interferes with those plans.
If your leaders don't know Javascript in advance they may become frustrated as the course commences. If the students are young, they may become frustrated when they understand that some maths will be necessary, and that they might find themselves without the sufficient math skills. You might want to skip some of the exercises if they cannot manage the four basic mathematical operations.
And the longer into the course your students will get, the more time between new lessons they may need to digest what they are learning.
I am aware that this is pretty vague, but I hope that you'll have more answers than mine!
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