The Iowa CS Standards (related to Programming)

Background

When designing instruction, it is incredibly important to understand what national, state, and local standards you are supposed to be addressing. As part of this course, I think that it is important that we think about the Iowa Standards (which also happen to be the National CSTA Standards) related to Programming.

Reading

• To begin with check out:
  • Iowa and Computer Science Education - Full page for CS education related things in Iowa
  • Spend some time poking around at the various links and get a feel for how Iowa treats/views Computer Science
• Next, download a copy of the Iowa CS standards
  • https://educate.iowa.gov/media/5191/download?inline=
  • While this is a large document, we are going to limit our attention to only certain portions.
  • Please use the following process:
    1. Read through the entire K-12 standards tables on pages 3-6. 
       • While we are going to focus on only a small part of this table for this project, I think it is important that you understand the big picture context. 
       • In particular, please pay attention to how certain topics track from kindergarten through high school.  Notice that there is, what appears to be, a lot of repetition.  But, in fact, when you look carefully at the language used it isn't repetition as much as development of depth on those ideas. 
       • Spend enough time with this document (15-20 minutes) that you understand the overall structure.
          
    2. Scroll down the document and notice how pages 7-35 relate back to the table on pages 3-6.  In particular, notice that there is an entire column (what would be labeled as 3b) missing from the table on pages 3-6.  This won't have an impact on this assignment, but it is something that you should be aware of.
        
    3. Find the standards for the grade band that you most relate to (the grade band that you selected for your small study group)
       • For Lower Elementary this is the ones labeled 1A-AP-08 through 1A-AP-15.  (pp 9-10)
       • For Upper Elementary this is the ones labeled 1B-AP-08 through 1B-AP-17.  (pp 14-16)
       • For Middle School this is the ones labeled 2-AP-10 through 2-AP-19.  (pp 20-22)
       • For High School this is the ones labeled 3A-AP-13 through 3A-AP-23.  (pp 27-29)

       These will be the standards you will be working with for this assignment.  Read through these carefully so that you understand the standards about programming that your age level should be able to meet. 

    4. For each of these programming standards I want you think through what you learned so far in our course sequence - in particular in the Fundamentals of Programming course.
       1. Do you feel like you observed this standard in the way your FOP course was taught?
          • If "yes" - When and/or how
          • If "no" - What kind of activity do you think this course could have utilized to better address this standard? 
          • [Note, I realize that for one or two of these, when the answer is "No" it may be very hard for you to answer this question since you may not know what the standard is even saying.  But for many others I think you will understand the standard even without direct instruction and I think you can imagine/envision activities that would have addressed this standard. Please give this question an honest attempt at an answer.]
       2. Even if you haven't seen it in your FOP course, do you feel like you have enough other knowledge related to this standard to think about incorporating it into your classroom?
          1. If "yes" -  What kinds of activities (in addition to the ones you observed in our classroom) do you feel would address this standard.
          2. If "no" - Why not [Again, this is tightly tied to the No in part 1 but it is actually a different question.
       
       
    5. You should write down your thoughts about these standards/questions and be ready to discuss them at your small group meeting this week. I will ask you to submit your answers to these questions (via a Google Form) after your small group has met.

Submission

I will be grading this on a purely 1/0 basis.  You get credit for submitting something "on time" that shows that you put effort/thought into crafting a meaningful response. 

I do not see there being any right or wrong answers in this activity.  Similarly, length of your answer does not necessarily correlate with the quality of your answers.  Instead, I will be looking to see if you have considered a broad set of ideas/concepts for this reflection and will be looking at the clarity with which you have crafted your response(s).  This includes things like spelling, grammar, formatting, etc.