The intended use of this course is for TEALS classrooms teaching Introduction to Computer Science in a yearlong format. For schools in BC, Canada, the course can be adapted to align with BC’s grade 11 Computer Programming or Computer Science courses. Since 2018, our community partner BCIT has been supporting the curriculum alignment work. Here are highlights of the changes:
- Created alternative, open-ended unit projects
- Incorprated BC curriculum's core competencies: communication, creative and critical thinking, personal and social responsibilities
- Included components of BC courses learning standards: big ideas, curricular competencies and content
- Incorporated opportunities to learn about First People’s heritage and culture. For example, in Lab 2.02, the “Can I be a Prime Minister” program can be adapted for students to learn more about other levels of leadership, such as Elders of First Nation, Métis, and Inuit communities.
- Curricular competencies under Applied Skills, such as ideating, prototyping and testing, are incorporated into the alternative projects and throughout the course. Students learn that the design cycle is an ongoing reflective process.
- Activities involved conducting user-centred research are added to the course. For example, the Unit 8 Open-Ended project covers project planning and brainstorming, user-centred research, and evaluating.
- Students learn programming language constructs to support input/output, logic, decision structure, and loops, etc.
- In the open-ended projects, students apply design thinking skills and programming concepts.
- Reasoning and analyzing: Students explore, analyze, and apply mathematical ideas and computer science concepts in various exercises and projects in the course.
- Understanding and solving: Throughout the course, students represent computer science ideas in concrete, pictorial, and symbolic forms, such as writing psudocode or creating diagrams.
- Communicating and representing: Students have opportunities, through various lesson activities, to explain and justify computer science ideas. Teaching strategies such as Think-Pair-Share or pair-programming are encourged in the teaching guides
- Connecting and reflecting: Students have opportunities throughout the course to reflect on mathematical and computational thinking
- In Unit 3 Project - Cross Country Canada, students can apply mathematics in situational contexts. Students can use graphs to visualize the problem.
- In Unit 4 Project - Tic-Tac-Toe, students can apply algorithmic thinking and explore the idea of fairness in game design.
- The Supplementary lesson Binary Day covers the learning outcome of number systems.
- In the supplementary Financial Calculator project, students can use mathematics concepts and tools to solve real-life problems and connect to personal interests
This course is originally designed for use in 50-min long classes for a semestered course. Below please see a sample pacing guide for using the course for 75-80 min long classes, with the assumption that there are about 85 instructional days for the year-long course.
- Day 1: 1.01 + 1.02
- Day 2: 1.03
- Day 3: 1.04
- Day 4: 1.05
- Day 5-6: 1.06 Mad Libs Project
- Day 1: 2.01 + 2.02
- Day 2: 2.03
- Day 3: 2.04
- Day 4: 2.05
- Day 5: 2.06
- Day 6-11: 2.07 Ogopogo - Text Monster Game Project
- Day 1: 3.01
- Day 2: 3.02
- Day 3: 3.03
- Day 4: 3.04
- Day 5-10: 3.06 Cross Country Canada Project
- Day 1: 4.01 + 4.02
- Day 2: 4.03
- Day 3: 4.04
- Day 5: 4.05
- Day 6-11: 4.06 Tic-Tac-Toe Project
- Day 1: 5.01
- Day 2: 5.02
- Day 3: 5.03
- Day 4: 5.04
- Day 5-7: 5.05 EarSketch Song Project
- Day 1: 6.01 + 6.02
- Day 2: 6.03
- Day 3: 6.04
- Day 4-8: 6.05 – Guess Who Hockey Canada Project
- Day 1: 7.01 + 7.02
- Day 2: 7.03
- Day 3: 7.04
- Day 5-9: 7.05 Pokémon Project
- Day 1: Project introduction, researching and brainstorming
- Day 2: Prototyping
- Day 3-6: Project Implementation
- Day 7: Project Presentation
- Day 1: 8.01
- Day 2: 8.02 + 8.03
- Day 3-10: 8.04 Final Project Implementation