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What Abstraction Reveals…and What It Hides
My next unit focused on abstraction, and it pushed my thinking in a different direction. In our first activity, I examined everyday examples of abstraction and identified what each one highlights and what it hides. That framing helped make abstraction clear. A graph of a knight’s tour highlights possible moves but hides physical proximity. ORF…
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Patterns, Generalization, and Discovery
For my final creation in unit 4, I created a mini lesson on multiplicative thinking focused on patterns and generalization. The objective is simple: students observe patterns in numbers and use them to make predictions. We begin with a familiar sequence, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, __, and ask not just what comes next, but…
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Iterating Through Pattern Matching
This week, I created a game in MakeCode Arcade focused on pattern matching. While I enjoyed building the mechanics, what stood out most to me was the music. In my previous projects, I had only discovered how to create custom sounds using solfege. I thought that was the extent of the music features available. In…
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Training AI and the Problem of Bias
This week, I experimented with training a simple AI model using Code.org’s Oceans activity. The task seemed straightforward. Train the AI to recognize fish based on the examples I provided. I felt confident I had trained it well. And yet it still allowed an apple into the fish category. That moment was eye-opening. It forced…
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Taking It Up a Notch: Designing the System
After decoding pixel art and recreating it in MakeCode, it was my turn to design both the image and the coding sheet. I created a pixelated solar system using MakeCode Arcade, carefully building the image square by square. But the real challenge was not the artwork. It was generating the binary coding sheet that would…
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From Paper to Pixels
This week, I explored pixel art using the CS Unplugged “Pixel Painter” activity. Before touching MakeCode, I printed out the coding sheets and manually color-coded them. Each square represented a pixel, and each number or binary pattern corresponded to a color. At first glance, it felt simple. Just coloring boxes. But it quickly became clear…
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Decomposing The World Around Us
For our final decomposition activity before moving into code, I chose something very real: my dog’s toy bin. Yes, my dog again. I couldn’t help it. At first, it just looks like a chaotic basket of plush, rubber, rope, and squeaky objects. Once I dumped everything out and began sorting, I realized how much decision-making…
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Decomposing Dance Moves
For this activity, I was asked to decompose something familiar. I chose the Macarena. In case it’s been a while, here’s a refresher! At first, it feels almost silly to break down a dance everyone “just knows.” But once I slowed down and wrote out the steps, I realized how structured it actually is. I…
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Decomposition in Action
Starting Unit 3, we focused on decomposition. Not in theory. Not in abstract computer science language. In real life. The task I chose to decompose was simple: packing my dog’s dinner. At first, it feels like one task. Feed the dog. Done. But when I slowed down and listed the subtasks, it quickly became more…
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Information Processing Model with AI
If you walk into my classroom during math time, you will probably hear us singing. Skip-count songs are one of my favorite tools for teaching multiplication because they really work! Kids connect to rhythm and melody much faster than to a plain list of numbers. I have seen the magic firsthand. A student who struggles…
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