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I've taught CS for about 15 years now. To get the majority of kids in a class actively involved is an art. It's less about the tools, though those can help, and

I've taught CS for about 15 years now. To get the majority of kids in a class actively involved is an art. It's less about the tools, though those can help, and more about who you are, as a teacher. It takes time to develop that. The ability to read kids, adjust your lessons on the fly, and keep their attention. Sometimes it's about developing relationships and trust within the school, which can take months or even years. For me, there is no silver bullet, and every year I adjust to suit the class I'm teaching. This year the kids were much less able than the year before, so we played more revision games, and came back again and again to the basics, just from different angles. The year prior was a solid lot, and I was able to go beyond the curriculum and have fun with them exploring things. Edit: You'll never get all the kids to leave the class loving CS, but you can usually get all of them to leave the class not feeling frustrated by it.

indymike 3y ago
> Edit: You'll never get all the kids to leave the class loving CS, but you can usually get all of them to leave the class not feeling frustrated by it. I wish more teachers would understand this.
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  I think most teachers do understand, but most of the teachers I had, simply did not care (anymore). (CS teachers were an excemption, though)
scns 3y ago
The "best" professors/teachers i saw yet, where radiating an exhuberant joy while talking about their topic. It is fun to listen. They where a russian teaching in america who recorded a series about physics for TTC, The Teaching Company. He got voted best professor in america twice.The other one was David Malan of Harvards CS50 on [0]. Beware though, it sadly spoils you for later lectures by others. [0] https://edx.org https://edx.org
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  I don't know how they do it though - I could imagine enjoying teaching a subject once in awhile, but to be "on" for 5 or 6 identical classes a day and then repeat that until the pension kicks in seems pretty tough. Of course, professors have it better than high school teachers since teaching isn't their primary job.
  - bigtunacan 3y ago
    Some people really like to teach others, so I can understand how teachers would find joy in this. I think it has to be especially hard to maintain that in K-12 where all the children have to be, but most of them don't want to be. At least college is optional, so there is a higher percentage that actually desire to learn. I think that would make it easier for a teacher to keep their passion for the job.
- nati0n 3y ago
  Interested in the first professor mentioned, but can't narrow it down and find who they are. Can you provide any more information?
  - g8geufg 3y ago
    I found him: Alex Filippenko https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Filippenko https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Filippenko
geek_at 3y ago
I was a CS teacher for 8 years and the way I was able to hook like 85% of classes was I was introducing them to Hackits [1]. They all loved it because they use the web so much and this gave them the feeling of being able to look inside the matrix This was also how I got into CS many years ago. The old tricks still work [1] https://blog.haschek.at/2014/why-hackits-are-the-first-thing-i-teach.html https://blog.haschek.at/2014/why-hackits-are-the-first-thing...
- kareemm 3y ago
  These are genius. Thanks for sharing. I'll definitely be sharing w/ my kids when they get old enough. What's your take on the lower bound where kids are generally capable of figuring these out?
  - Mezzie 3y ago
    It's going to depend on the kid. I was doing this sort of thing at 4 or 5.
  - geek_at 3y ago
    I was using this with the youngest kids in our school which were like 11 but for real learning benifit I'd recommend 13 and up
- jtchang 3y ago
  These are fantastic!
- mehere14 3y ago
  I am bookmarking this website for when my kid is old enough. So please don't shut this down. Host it on cloud flare or something which has a good free plan.
  - Dah00n 3y ago
    It is already broken. If you follow the link in the blog post you get a 404: https://www.socialcube.net/hackits https://www.socialcube.net/hackits
kitsunesoba 3y ago
> Edit: You'll never get all the kids to leave the class loving CS, but you can usually get all of them to leave the class not feeling frustrated by it. I'm not a teacher but I think this is probably true of most subjects. I wish my high school math teachers had applied this idea in their teaching.
troelsSteegin 3y ago
"The Skillful Teacher", by Saphier, Haley-Speca, and Gower, is an authoritative and comprehensive guide to the craft of teaching. Like the commenter says, there's a lot going on, and so potentially a lot to juggle. https://www.rbteach.com/resources/skillful-teacher-7th-edition/ https://www.rbteach.com/resources/skillful-teacher-7th-editi...
smn1234 3y ago
I've seen this phrase a few times and absolutely love it: "teach kids, not subjects"
908B64B197 3y ago
> Edit: You'll never get all the kids to leave the class loving CS, but you can usually get all of them to leave the class not feeling frustrated by it. There's nothing wrong with kids not enjoying CS at the end of the class. It's an elective, meaning some of them are there because they aren't sure they'll enjoy the subject and want to test the water. Your (I'm sure excellent) teaching probably saved a few from enrolling in CS and then dropping out or wasting a year switching majors. This might be somewhat controversial, but I believe the point of early CS education should be to expose students to computational thinking and get them a sense that some problems are easy to solve with computers (if you can break it down as a series of steps) and some are incredibly hard. I think it's normal it'll click for some students and not others (intro to programming at the college level is reputed to be completely bimodal as well). [0] [0] https://blog.codinghorror.com/separating-programming-sheep-from-non-programming-goats/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/separating-programming-sheep-f...
- MBCook 3y ago
  > …should be to expose students to computational thinking and get them a sense that some problems are easy to solve with computers (*if you can break it down as a series of steps*) Emphasis mine. This bit, taught through CS or otherwise, is so incredibly useful. I’ve seen so many people throughout my life if all ages run into an issue and have no idea how to approach it because it was ‘too big’. Internalizing that can be so incredibly useful.
Izkata 3y ago
For a totally different way of getting it to work than the others: Back in my highschool there was an intro to programming course and no teacher, so every year one of the math teachers was recruited to take it over the summer and teach the class the next year. The best one was the geometry teacher, who kinda took the lazy route - she was the one I found out about this scheme from, and was totally willing to admit when she didn't know something. She ended up encouraging students to help each other and was extremely lax with the rules, resulting in: two or three of us who wandered the classroom to help others, one showoff who kept people interested in what they could create (one example, in the classroom he made a chat program and gave everyone a copy, then weeks later activated a hidden feature that popped open the CD tray of everyone using it, which turned out to be about half the students), and another who joked about using the "blackboard compiler" - we somehow got one more student than computers so he volunteered to go without, and did his work in chalk on the blackboard (yes, where everyone could see it, and the teacher was in the room and knew what he was doing), only actually coding it once someone else was done and a computer freed up. Some people did get frustrated at times, but it never lasted long because of how she encouraged us to help each other for all the work. Only during tests was she strict.
- otoburb 3y ago
  I've seen parents fall into two camps when this dynamic arises in classes with a wide(r) spectrum of ability: First group of parents are happy that kids are helping each other out, acting as "teacher aides" for their class peers, especially the parents of kids being helped because this dynamic drops the "teacher"-to-student ratio (i.e. slightly more individualized attention per student at the expense of the student teaching assistants). Second group of parents acknowledge that student teaching assistants develop some form of leadership skills but aren't happy that the tradeoff seems to be at the expense of learning new knowledge that the teacher should, in theory, be imparting. Also, there's probably a limit where student teaching assistants might/can become bored teaching instead of learning if the dynamic continues on too long or across multiple classes.
  - SturgeonsLaw 3y ago
    > knowledge that the teacher should, in theory, be imparting I get that teachers at high schools are not subject matter experts, but it blows my mind that they're expected to teach topics that they themselves do not understand. I come from a family of teachers and I've seen the effort that some of them put in behind the scenes to learn these topics, and they do have the best of intentions, but if I was a parent and found out my kid's teacher was all "I don't know this topic so you guys just do whatever" I'd be a bit peeved as well.
yodsanklai 3y ago
I never taught kids, but I taught numerous classes and labs to university students and professionals at various levels. Programming is like a game and is fun for a lot of people. It's an easy topic to teach, but there are a few (obvious) rules 1. Exercises should be solvable, not too easy, not too hard, and self-contained. 2. Students come with extremely different abilities, so you need to have exercises of gradual difficulty to accommodate everyone. You want everyone to be able to find some solutions otherwise they'll be frustrated. 3. If you provide good material, you can relax during the class, the computer does the work for you

indymike 3y ago

> Edit: You'll never get all the kids to leave the class loving CS, but you can usually get all of them to leave the class not feeling frustrated by it. I wish more teachers would understand this.

hutzlibu 3y ago
I think most teachers do understand, but most of the teachers I had, simply did not care (anymore). (CS teachers were an excemption, though)

scns 3y ago

The "best" professors/teachers i saw yet, where radiating an exhuberant joy while talking about their topic. It is fun to listen. They where a russian teaching in america who recorded a series about physics for TTC, The Teaching Company. He got voted best professor in america twice.The other one was David Malan of Harvards CS50 on [0]. Beware though, it sadly spoils you for later lectures by others. [0] https://edx.org https://edx.org

hotpotamus 3y ago
I don't know how they do it though - I could imagine enjoying teaching a subject once in awhile, but to be "on" for 5 or 6 identical classes a day and then repeat that until the pension kicks in seems pretty tough. Of course, professors have it better than high school teachers since teaching isn't their primary job.
- bigtunacan 3y ago
  Some people really like to teach others, so I can understand how teachers would find joy in this. I think it has to be especially hard to maintain that in K-12 where all the children have to be, but most of them don't want to be. At least college is optional, so there is a higher percentage that actually desire to learn. I think that would make it easier for a teacher to keep their passion for the job.
nati0n 3y ago
Interested in the first professor mentioned, but can't narrow it down and find who they are. Can you provide any more information?
- g8geufg 3y ago
  I found him: Alex Filippenko https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Filippenko https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Filippenko

geek_at 3y ago

I was a CS teacher for 8 years and the way I was able to hook like 85% of classes was I was introducing them to Hackits [1]. They all loved it because they use the web so much and this gave them the feeling of being able to look inside the matrix This was also how I got into CS many years ago. The old tricks still work [1] https://blog.haschek.at/2014/why-hackits-are-the-first-thing-i-teach.html https://blog.haschek.at/2014/why-hackits-are-the-first-thing...

kareemm 3y ago
These are genius. Thanks for sharing. I'll definitely be sharing w/ my kids when they get old enough. What's your take on the lower bound where kids are generally capable of figuring these out?
- Mezzie 3y ago
  It's going to depend on the kid. I was doing this sort of thing at 4 or 5.
- geek_at 3y ago
  I was using this with the youngest kids in our school which were like 11 but for real learning benifit I'd recommend 13 and up
jtchang 3y ago
These are fantastic!
mehere14 3y ago
I am bookmarking this website for when my kid is old enough. So please don't shut this down. Host it on cloud flare or something which has a good free plan.
- Dah00n 3y ago
  It is already broken. If you follow the link in the blog post you get a 404: https://www.socialcube.net/hackits https://www.socialcube.net/hackits

kitsunesoba 3y ago

> Edit: You'll never get all the kids to leave the class loving CS, but you can usually get all of them to leave the class not feeling frustrated by it. I'm not a teacher but I think this is probably true of most subjects. I wish my high school math teachers had applied this idea in their teaching.

troelsSteegin 3y ago

"The Skillful Teacher", by Saphier, Haley-Speca, and Gower, is an authoritative and comprehensive guide to the craft of teaching. Like the commenter says, there's a lot going on, and so potentially a lot to juggle. https://www.rbteach.com/resources/skillful-teacher-7th-edition/ https://www.rbteach.com/resources/skillful-teacher-7th-editi...

smn1234 3y ago

I've seen this phrase a few times and absolutely love it: "teach kids, not subjects"

908B64B197 3y ago

> Edit: You'll never get all the kids to leave the class loving CS, but you can usually get all of them to leave the class not feeling frustrated by it. There's nothing wrong with kids not enjoying CS at the end of the class. It's an elective, meaning some of them are there because they aren't sure they'll enjoy the subject and want to test the water. Your (I'm sure excellent) teaching probably saved a few from enrolling in CS and then dropping out or wasting a year switching majors. This might be somewhat controversial, but I believe the point of early CS education should be to expose students to computational thinking and get them a sense that some problems are easy to solve with computers (if you can break it down as a series of steps) and some are incredibly hard. I think it's normal it'll click for some students and not others (intro to programming at the college level is reputed to be completely bimodal as well). [0] [0] https://blog.codinghorror.com/separating-programming-sheep-from-non-programming-goats/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/separating-programming-sheep-f...

MBCook 3y ago
> …should be to expose students to computational thinking and get them a sense that some problems are easy to solve with computers (*if you can break it down as a series of steps*) Emphasis mine. This bit, taught through CS or otherwise, is so incredibly useful. I’ve seen so many people throughout my life if all ages run into an issue and have no idea how to approach it because it was ‘too big’. Internalizing that can be so incredibly useful.

Izkata 3y ago

For a totally different way of getting it to work than the others: Back in my highschool there was an intro to programming course and no teacher, so every year one of the math teachers was recruited to take it over the summer and teach the class the next year. The best one was the geometry teacher, who kinda took the lazy route - she was the one I found out about this scheme from, and was totally willing to admit when she didn't know something. She ended up encouraging students to help each other and was extremely lax with the rules, resulting in: two or three of us who wandered the classroom to help others, one showoff who kept people interested in what they could create (one example, in the classroom he made a chat program and gave everyone a copy, then weeks later activated a hidden feature that popped open the CD tray of everyone using it, which turned out to be about half the students), and another who joked about using the "blackboard compiler" - we somehow got one more student than computers so he volunteered to go without, and did his work in chalk on the blackboard (yes, where everyone could see it, and the teacher was in the room and knew what he was doing), only actually coding it once someone else was done and a computer freed up. Some people did get frustrated at times, but it never lasted long because of how she encouraged us to help each other for all the work. Only during tests was she strict.

otoburb 3y ago
I've seen parents fall into two camps when this dynamic arises in classes with a wide(r) spectrum of ability: First group of parents are happy that kids are helping each other out, acting as "teacher aides" for their class peers, especially the parents of kids being helped because this dynamic drops the "teacher"-to-student ratio (i.e. slightly more individualized attention per student at the expense of the student teaching assistants). Second group of parents acknowledge that student teaching assistants develop some form of leadership skills but aren't happy that the tradeoff seems to be at the expense of learning new knowledge that the teacher should, in theory, be imparting. Also, there's probably a limit where student teaching assistants might/can become bored teaching instead of learning if the dynamic continues on too long or across multiple classes.
- SturgeonsLaw 3y ago
  > knowledge that the teacher should, in theory, be imparting I get that teachers at high schools are not subject matter experts, but it blows my mind that they're expected to teach topics that they themselves do not understand. I come from a family of teachers and I've seen the effort that some of them put in behind the scenes to learn these topics, and they do have the best of intentions, but if I was a parent and found out my kid's teacher was all "I don't know this topic so you guys just do whatever" I'd be a bit peeved as well.

yodsanklai 3y ago

I never taught kids, but I taught numerous classes and labs to university students and professionals at various levels. Programming is like a game and is fun for a lot of people. It's an easy topic to teach, but there are a few (obvious) rules 1. Exercises should be solvable, not too easy, not too hard, and self-contained. 2. Students come with extremely different abilities, so you need to have exercises of gradual difficulty to accommodate everyone. You want everyone to be able to find some solutions otherwise they'll be frustrated. 3. If you provide good material, you can relax during the class, the computer does the work for you