🧑🏾‍🤝‍🧑🏾 day-plan

🔖
  1. Morning orientation
  2. Discussion: programming language concepts
  3. Morning break
  4. Study Group
  5. Games, rules, logic and strategy
  6. lunch
  7. demo
  8. Study Group
  9. Code Review
  10. Afternoon break
  11. Study Group
  12. Retro

✍🏽 Register

🎡 Morning orientation

Learning Objectives

Planning during the week

🧭 During the week, create a post on Slack and get some people to take on the roles of facilitator and timekeeper. Nominate new people each time.

👣 Steps

If you haven’t done so already, choose someone (volunteer or trainee) to be the facilitator for this morning orientation block. Choose another to be the timekeeper.

🎙️ The Facilitator will:

  1. Assemble the entire group (all volunteers & all trainees) in a circle
  2. Briefly welcome everyone with an announcement, like this:

    💬 “Morning everyone, Welcome to CYF {REGION}, this week we are working on {MODULE} {SPRINT} and we’re currently working on {SUMMARISE THE TOPICS OF THE WEEK}”

  3. Ask any newcomers to introduce themselves to the group, and welcome them.
  4. Now check: is it the start of a new module? Is it sprint 1? If so, read out the success criteria for the new module.
  5. Next go through the morning day plan only (typically on the curriculum website) - and check the following things:

Facilitator Checklist

  • Check the number of volunteers you have for the morning
  • Check someone is leading each session
  • Describe how any new activities works for the group
  • Decide how best to allocate trainees and volunteers for a given block - most blocks will make this clear

⏰ The Timekeeper will:

  • Announce the start of an activity and how long it will take (check everyone is listening)
  • Manage any whole class timers that are used in an activity
  • Give people a 10-minute wrap-up warning before the end of an activity
  • Announce the end of an activity and what happens next

🧰 Discussion: programming language concepts

Learning Objectives

This sprint you have read about programming language concepts in How Computers Really Work.

Topics to discuss:

Variables and memory

What is main memory? What is a variable?

How does a variable relate to a memory location?

How is a string laid out in memory?

How does main memory (RAM) relate to secondary storage (a hard drive)? Why do we have both?

Functions

What happens when you call a function?

What are parameters/arguments? Return values? Scope?

How does “the next line of code to run” move around when using functions?

Classes

What is a class? How would you explain a class to someone who doesn’t know what code is?

Make sure to discuss real-world examples.

Make sure you describe the relationship between a class and an instance of a class (often called an object).

Objects

Instances of classes are often called objects.

This kind of “object” is similar to, but slightly different from what we call an “object” in JavaScript.

What are the similarities and differences between these two meanings of the word object?

CPUs

What does a CPU do?

What benefits are there to having multiple CPU cores?

🫖 Morning Break

A quick break of fifteen minutes so we can all concentrate on the next piece of work.

🛗 Study Group

Learning Objectives

What are we doing now?

You’re going to use this time to work through coursework. Your cohort will collectively self-organise to work through the coursework together in your own way. Sort yourselves into groups that work for you.

Use this time wisely

You will have study time in almost every class day. Don’t waste it. Use it to:

  • work through the coursework
  • ask questions and get unblocked
  • give and receive code review
  • work on your portfolio
  • develop your own projects

🎲 Games, rules, logic, and strategy

Usually there’s a rota showing who will lead the energiser. We have some favourite games you can play if you are stuck.

  1. Traffic Jam: re-order the cars to unblock yourself
  2. Telephone: draw the words and write the pictures
  3. Set: a game of visual perception
  4. Mastermind: a game of deduction
  5. Sudoku: a game of logic
  6. Mancala: a game of strategy

🍽️ Community Lunch

Every Saturday we cook and eat together. We share our food and our stories. We learn about each other and the world. We build community.

This is everyone’s responsibility, so help with what is needed to make this happen, for example, organising the food, setting up the table, washing up, tidying up, etc. You can do something different every week. You don’t need to be constantly responsible for the same task.

🎤 Demo

At CYF we expect you to demo your work to the class. You must have many opportunities to practice how to clearly and simply explain your work to others. This is really important both for interviews and for getting promoted later on.

⏰ Timekeeper

The timekeeper will keep the groups on track.

Split randomly into groups of no more than 5 people. Each person will have 2 minutes to demo their work to the group. After the demo, the group will give feedback for 5 minutes. Then the next person will demo their work.

🧑🏼‍🎓 Trainees

1. Demo

You will demo your work to the group. You will have 2 minutes to explain what you did and why. It’s ok to show broken code or code that doesn’t work yet. Just make sure your demo is interesting.

2. Feedback

After the demo, the group will give you feedback for up to 5 minutes. It’s smart to suggest what kind of feedback you want by asking some “generative” questions. For example:

  • I wasn’t sure if it makes sense to try X. What do you think?
  • I liked the way I did X, but I know there are other approaches, what did you do?
  • I found X really confusing, did anyone else have the same problem?
  • I wasn’t sure if I explained what an X was very clearly, how could I have explained it better?

💡 Tips:

  • Practice your demo before class.
  • Keep it simple. Don’t try to show everything you did. Just show one interesting thing.
  • Keep it short. Two minutes is enough.
  • Explain what you did and why.
  • Show your code.
  • Ask for feedback.

🛗 Study Group

Learning Objectives

What are we doing now?

You’re going to use this time to work through coursework. Your cohort will collectively self-organise to work through the coursework together in your own way. Sort yourselves into groups that work for you.

Use this time wisely

You will have study time in almost every class day. Don’t waste it. Use it to:

  • work through the coursework
  • ask questions and get unblocked
  • give and receive code review
  • work on your portfolio
  • develop your own projects

🛎️ Code waiting for review 🔗

Below are trainee coursework Pull Requests that need to be reviewed by volunteers.

Change letter being replaced from s to i 🔗
Having people write s/s/S/ is a little more confusing than s/i/I/ for their first exercise. Start a review
Add instructions for implementing cowsay 🔗

This is for sprint 4

Sample solution in the top commit of https://github.com/CodeYourFuture/Module-Tools/commits/implement-cowsay-solutions/

Start a review
Add exercises testing understanding of number systems 🔗

This meets the learning objectives of the binary numbers section of sprint 1.

Solutions can be found in the HEAD commit of https://github.com/CodeYourFuture/Module-Tools/tree/binary-numbers-solutions (currently e61b911d89b1ad5c704df3cc52bcd84230306c7f).

Start a review
See more pull requests

🫖 Afternoon Break

Please feel comfortable and welcome to pray at this time if this is part of your religion.

If you are breastfeeding and would like a private space, please let us know.

🛗 Study Group

Learning Objectives

What are we doing now?

You’re going to use this time to work through coursework. Your cohort will collectively self-organise to work through the coursework together in your own way. Sort yourselves into groups that work for you.

Use this time wisely

You will have study time in almost every class day. Don’t waste it. Use it to:

  • work through the coursework
  • ask questions and get unblocked
  • give and receive code review
  • work on your portfolio
  • develop your own projects

🔄 Retro: Start / Stop / Continue

🕹️Retro (20 minutes)

A retro is a chance to reflect. You can do this on RetroTool (create a free anonymous retro and share the link with the class) or on sticky notes on a wall.

  1. Set a timer for 5 minutes. There’s one on the RetroTool too.
  2. Write down as many things as you can think of that you’d like to start, stop, and continue doing next sprint.
  3. Write one point per note and keep it short.
  4. When the timer goes off, one person should set a timer for 1 minute and group the notes into themes.
  5. Next, set a timer for 2 minutes and all vote on the most important themes by adding a dot or a +1 to the note.
  6. Finally, set a timer for 8 minutes and all discuss the top three themes.