AP CSP Checklist

Hello and welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us for this really fun topic we have today. We are diving into AP Computer Science Principles and getting you set up for the school year and lots of success teaching that course with your students. So we welcome you. This is our third webinar in our back to school series and we do have a few more. We'll let you know what those are at the end of our session here. But for now, we'll focus on CS Principles and I will make sure that I get in the chat a link to the slide deck so that if you want to come back and reference the slides at any time, you can throughout the school year. We're going to provide you with some great information here. We have tons of experience on the call with our expert panelists today. So, we will introduce them right now. First is Carlos Duncan. He is from CodeHS here on the PD team. Carlos, would you like to say hi? Tell us a little bit about your background.

Welcome everyone. Carlos Duncan, as Stephanie stated, I am a PD specialist here at CodeHS, new kid on the block. But I have been teaching now, I was in the classroom for roughly 15 years. Taught AP CSP, love teaching AP courses. I had a great run when it comes to my students. They actually performed top at those particular schools that I was at, and so I am here just to offer some impactful information and I'm happy to be here.

Thank you, Carlos. And then next we have Kim Ingram who is one of our teacher trainers. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Yeah. Hi, thanks for joining us today. My name is Kim. I teach in Nebraska. And I have been a teacher, this is my 16th year, but my 10th year teaching computer science, and I've been using CodeHS the entire time. So, I've taught a multitude of courses. So, I'm very happy to be here and hopefully I can share some good things with you guys.

Yes, we're going to have some fantastic insights today. Okay, so here's how we're going to spend the next hour. First, we're going to talk about our flavors of CS Principles. You might be familiar that the exam itself is language agnostic. You can teach the coding language of your choice while you are leading your students through this survey course. Principles is more than just coding and can be taught in any coding language. So we'll talk about the curriculum flavors that CodeHS offers, and also we will talk about how to submit your course audit. There are some things you need to do at the beginning of the school year in order to be in good standing with the College Board and have everything registered so students can take the exam in the spring. We will talk about additional resources above and beyond the free Computer Science Principles curriculum that we have available on the CodeHS platform, and we'll take some notes on exam overview and preparation. I know it feels really far away. May is exam time, but we already want to start thinking, especially because some teachers do deliver their Principles course in one semester. Others, probably the majority, deliver the Principles course over the course of a full school year. Either way, we'll talk exam prep because that is something that you'll want to keep in mind as you are thinking about pacing your students through the Principles course.

So, we welcome everyone, and just a few housekeeping things before we get to our panelists. First is that live attendance is required for certificate and PD hours, and we will be syncing the Zoom attendance to our CodeHS platform, and you will automatically receive a certificate of completion for attending today. We don't have to click a link anymore or anything like that; we've got it all automated. We do invite your notetakers, but please make sure that those are muted and disabled so they're not posting in our chat today. But we would love to know who's here. If you want to introduce yourself in the chat, feel free. It's open to you. However, if you do have questions for our panelists, I will ask you to post those in the Q&A area of the Zoom platform. This is just so I can keep track of any questions that come up; they won't get lost as I'm dropping links in the chat. Good vibes, advice, tips, tricks on all things CS Principles are welcome in the chat, but if you have a question, make sure you drop it in the Q&A.

I am going to be showing off our platform today and our curriculum today. So, if you do not have a CodeHS account, I invite you to create one. Our teacher and student accounts are free. Access to our Computer Science Principles is free. So go ahead and sign up for an account so that you can have access to all the great high-quality instructional materials we have available for you and your students. And while you're signing into CodeHS, if you already have an account or while you're signing up for a new account, I'll go ahead and tell you a little bit about the company. We have been providing computer science curriculum for many years to schools all across the United States and now even internationally. We started off as Code High School as the name implies, but over the years we have found with the greater and greater push from lots of different groups—parent groups, legislative groups, advocates in computer science-related industries for employees who have computer science skills—we have noticed that we're having to bring computer science curriculum earlier and earlier in students' learning journeys so that they can be prepared for employment, enlistment, or enrollment when they graduate college. We've gone all the way down now to middle school and elementary school most recently with our CodeHS elementary school curriculum.

Everything, though, is completely web-based. So as an equity driver, we keep everything online and contained in our website so that anywhere a student has a device and access to the internet, they can interact with these high-quality instructional materials. We also offer a lot more than the curriculum—professional development, of course, as you know from being here with us today, and also a suite of LMS tools, again all web-based, that help you with your teaching. We have the ability to grade student work, provide messages to students, and give feedback on their progress learning computer science. We also have the ability to roster students and manage rosters and all kinds of great tools that you're likely already familiar with using other edtech products. We invite you again to check those out as we work through this Computer Science Principles curriculum and resources today.

All right, panelists, we're going to start off with a lightning round, just some information on your initial teaching experiences. We'll keep these short and sweet and quick so we can get to the CS Principles stuff, but I think this is really good information to start with.

Kim, first question. What's the one resource or CodeHS tool that saves you the most time in your teaching?

The Docs tab, because I show my students how to access that, and it cuts down the number of questions by so many because they can look it up themselves. So definitely Docs is really awesome.

That is a wonderful response. Thank you so much. A free tool to all teachers and students. Yeah, you've got to set up those help routines because there's nothing worse than when five kids have bugs, their hands are in the air, and you're like, I can't get to you all. So, the Docs tab Kim is referring to is available to students at all times as a self-help sort of resource and digital textbook.

All right, Carlos, what's your favorite CS Principles resource?

So, it was the lesson plans that endorsed providers like CodeHS provide. Having those platforms and having those lesson plans, those were my favorite, especially when you were in the classroom where I was required to present a lesson plan each week. And so having that available saved a lot of time. Also, those big ideas on the College Board, those were also some good tools that I liked in reference to the CS Principles platform.

Awesome. Thank you so much for that.

All right, Kim, back to you. What's one thing you got wrong your first year teaching that you now do completely differently?

Pacing. I got really nervous because I was planning to do one lesson a day. And then I had kids that would just fly through it and I'd go, "Oh my gosh, we've got to do two a day." And then I'd have kids who'd fall way behind and are just not understanding because we're moving too fast. So pacing is definitely one thing that I do completely differently. I still do one lesson a day, but I structure my class very differently. And I'll talk about that a little bit in a future slide.

Yeah, I love that. Teachers are always improving. Every single year, you get better at your craft and learn something new, a more efficient way to do something, or you get better at anticipating those student misconceptions and scaffolding students' learning.

Carlos, what's one misconception that new AP CS Principles teachers may carry?

There's quite a few, but one that stands out is this misconception that the students coming into an AP course, especially with this being coding, have been in this environment before. And so a lot of those teachers think, oh, I can just come in, I'm going to tell them, hey, do this, and it's just going to run. That's not the case for most teachers. As our platform offers, we offer those teachers that are new to the curriculum various tools and classes that they can take. That's a misconception, that both of them aren't learning at the same time. Most students, this is their first time in a coding environment, so you want to just be careful of that.

Yeah, I think that's great advice. We want to keep the rigor of an AP course, but Principles was created as sort of an introductory AP course. It is meant to be a survey course of the computer science field, so it's not just focused on coding. It gets students introduced to a lot of different concepts in the field and is meant to be a course that can spark students' interest in furthering their computer science education. So yeah, that's a great point to make, Carlos, that yes, it is AP, yes, it's rigorous, but it is also a course that is meant to give AP access and an introduction to AP to students. Thank you for sharing that.

All right, so Kim, just in general, what computer science topics tend to engage your students the most? Since Principles is a survey course, what kind of topics do they love?

They definitely like projects where they can be a little more creative. There are quite a few throughout all the courses that just let kids kind of put their own unique spin on it. I also have students work together sometimes on some of those projects. Also, just any project that pertains to the real world where they can bring in experiences that they've had or whatever it may be. They really like those.

I love that. Awesome. Carlos, same question.

Yeah, I agree with Kim. To add to that, my students when I was in the classroom teaching, when we went over the internet unit, one of the things I did was supplement it by showing them a documentary called The Social Dilemma. I supplemented it with that, so they were able to actually interact with the concepts that I was teaching them regarding the internet, how it was started, how it works, and its intended purpose. So they really got engaged into that, and that helped to actually push them along throughout the class and trust the process. So it was the internet.

I love that. I mean, we use it every day, but rarely do we stop and think about how it actually works, and it is quite technical. There's a lot of protocols and rules that have been established over the years, and getting students through that really technical piece, I'm sure that documentary really helps inspire and motivate them to get through the technical piece.

When you start mentioning TCP, UDP, they start saying, "Wait, what?" But then when you're able to show them how these systems work together and they've been utilizing these systems unbeknownst to them, now they get a better understanding. I even put a challenge out there and no one has actually answered or completed this challenge. I said, hey, I'll challenge you guys and I'll give you a Duncan Card if you stay off of your social media platforms and the internet for two weeks. They're raising their hands because of course they wanted that Duncan Card. But then I checked their phones when they allowed me to do so, and it's like, hey, look at all this time you spent scrolling. They're like, "Ah, Mr. Duncan, I just couldn't do it." And so I'm waiting for someone to break it.

We're all always trying to get better about that for sure. I'll take you up on that challenge, Carlos.

All right, so let me get into our CodeHS resources. From a curriculum standpoint, I mentioned earlier that we do have different flavors of this AP CS Principles course, and in the chat I am going to put some links for you to peruse. The first link is to our course catalog filtered to our AP courses. We have four different Principles flavors: AP CS Principles in JavaScript, CS Principles in Python, CS Principles with Roblox, and CS Principles with an added unit in Cybersecurity. It is the JavaScript CS Principles course, but it's got added units around cybersecurity. You can take a deep dive into any of those course overview pages that might interest you.

I'll just open up the Python course overview page and give you a little preview of what these pages provide to you. First, you get a description of the course. You can see a link to the syllabus here and just a real quick overview—125 contact hours—and you can take a further dive into each of the modules. We start here in the Python flavor of CSP with coding, that is a topic that normally really inspires students and gets them excited about computer science. So we start here with Karel the Dog in Python. Karel is our mascot, and she teaches students how to code through four basic commands. They just start with four commands they can use in Python. So again, an entry-level, gentle introduction to coding in this AP course. Then students add on to the complexity of their coding: they get into functions, parameters, and data structures. Then we take a turn to some other non-coding topics: we get into the internet, we get into data, we get into the impacts of computing, safety, responsibility, and things like that. So you can see this is quite a large course, a survey of computer science topics, but really engaging for students. Definitely take a second to check that out while I continue on in our slides.

Just thinking about the five big ideas: Carlos mentioned this earlier. The Principles course is meant to be really flexible and language agnostic as far as the teaching so that teachers and students can focus on these five big ideas in the field of computer science: Creative Development, Data, Algorithms and Programming, Computer Systems and Networks, and Impact of Computing. Now these, as you can see from the example units I was just showing, our course is not laid out specific to these big ideas. Instead, the big ideas are interwoven through our modules, and you can see where those are in the lesson plans.

Just so you know, keeping an eye towards the exam, there are weights given to each of the big ideas, also woven throughout the exam because there are multiple parts of the exam. You can't leave any out; you definitely want to hit all of the big ideas in your year with your students walking them through this Principles course. Just keep in mind when you're thinking through your pacing how much weight these big ideas carry throughout the exam—how much time should you spend basically on each big idea.

Before we get back to our panelists, I do want to let you know that we have updated our CodeHS CS Principles Python course. It is still 125 contact hours, but we've added some lessons, updated some exercises, given students some new challenges, and really just jazzed it up. It's still 100% aligned to the CS Principles standards, but like I said, a little more pizzazz, a little more interactivity for students. We've got some HTML notes where students will do reading and an interactive activity like a matching activity or a drag-and-drop activity. We've updated quizzes and, at teacher requests, we've added additional practice performance tasks assignments. Again, you can find that overview page in the links in the chat, and I will provide a link specifically to the Python syllabus in the chat as well.

A great update, a great refresh on that course. We did do a little bit of refreshing in the Principles JavaScript course as well; it just didn't get quite the rewrite of the Python course. So we encourage you to make sure when you're creating your courses and sections this year with CodeHS, you're using the updated versions of those courses.

Let's talk about pacing. Kim brought up pacing as something we all struggle with every year, right? We all learn, we're always learning about what we need to cover, when, and why. I wanted to introduce to you this awesome tool that one of our PD team members created: an interactive pacing tool. What you can do with it is mark your start date and your end date of your school year, and then mark if you are teaching in a 45-minute course or teaching on a block schedule. Once you've got your start dates and end dates in here, it will automatically map the syllabus to your calendar and create a calendar for you. This is an amazing tool and we are so excited to share this with you and let you play with it, because I think it's going to be a game-changer as far as helping you see in the long term how this course might play out for you and your students. Definitely check out that pacing tool; I dropped it in the chat, and let us know how you feel about that.

The CED from the College Board only contains a few guidelines around pacing. They just suggest that when you're determining the number of class periods to spend on each topic, make sure that you are integrating the topic questions in AP Classroom and ensuring that you provide those nine hours of in-class work time for students to create their Create performance task. Those were really the only two suggestions from the College Board.

So let's go to our panelists. Kim, what are your strategies for pacing students through CodeHS curriculum?

It kind of depends on the course just a little bit, but I have integrated some bell work to kind of review what we did the previous day. One thing that I really like is I code through one of the previous day's activities when we're doing the coding portion. I just kind of explain it how I think and demonstrate my thinking process as I go through it. I think that's been very valuable for kids because I do solve it for them, but I do it the day after it's due. Then they can kind of see how I go about solving it. So that's a suggestion for pacing.

Yeah, I love that. Honestly, that is the hardest piece: to transfer your adult problem-solving skills and your fluent coding skills to your students, right? It's really hard to impart the thinking processes that you're doing behind the scenes. So I love that modeling factor that you give them most school days. That's awesome.

And Carlos, since the exam is language agnostic, which version of CSP did you teach and why?

I taught both. I did teach JavaScript, but I was one of the ones pushing for Python. At that time, the particular endorsed provider that I was utilizing did not have a Python platform, so I had to supplement that. Thank God that I was able to do that, but it did cause a bit of heavy lifting on my end because I wanted to make sure... here's one of the things I want to make sure teachers understand is that the test itself, the language is Python. It is written in Python language, right? The students of course can choose those particular languages—JavaScript and so forth—and they are transferable, but I wanted them to actually get a glimpse of exactly what they were going to be doing. So when I gave them that practice test and they saw the Python language, they would be able to understand it. So I chose to specifically teach Python, but I did show both of those particular platforms or languages.

Thank you for sharing that experience. I have been around computer science curriculum for about six years now, and one of the questions that teachers ask most frequently is which language is easiest, which language should I teach my students first, right? It's a tough decision. There are many opinions about which one students should see first.

Kim, could you dive a little deeper into just how CodeHS course content is received by your students, maybe both lesson structure and the assignment types that they see?

Lesson structure, as I mentioned, has bell work, and as part of the bell work I'll code through one of the examples or exercises that they had for the previous day. Then I'll kind of set them up for what their assignment is for today, and at the end of the class I'll kind of recap a little bit and then do an exit ticket. One thing the kids have said is they really appreciate the amount of content knowledge and the different things that they can learn on this platform. Also, it's not directly related, but I really appreciate that I can add modules, turn them off, or move them around depending on how our schedule is going to work or if something else is coming up. I also really appreciate that I can pull from other courses into my current course if there's something I like better or if we need more time or don't have enough time. I like that there's flexibility there. Not always with the AP courses, but I really appreciate that.

Yeah, and I'm so glad that you brought that up because the College Board cares about covering the five big ideas and there are some specific topics, as we saw, that students need to have knowledge of in order to be prepared for the test, but they do not care at all about what order you teach the content in. So yeah, if you want to sprinkle the coding in and break it up throughout the year, and move the internet module up into the middle of the coding module so that you can just have a new topic on hand and get students learning a different topic in a different way—maybe you go unplugged with some lessons—you definitely have the flexibility to do that in this Principles course.

All right. You do have some things you need to square up with the College Board before students can take the exam. Make sure that you complete the AP audit process as soon as possible, especially if this is your first year of teaching AP CSP, because you won't get access to College Board resources until you submit your syllabus and your AP administrator in your district approves the syllabus and passes that along to the College Board. If you taught the class in the past, you should still have access to all the resources, but you'll lose it at some point if you don't resubmit that audit and syllabus this year. So all your students should register for AP Classroom, and then they get access to additional learning resources and test prep resources once their accounts are created on College Board.

To submit your syllabus, you're going to log into the College Board website, look for the endorsed provider on the AP audit site, and select the CodeHS syllabus. We are pre-approved, and those JavaScript, Python, and Cybersecurity versions are already listed as syllabi on the College Board website. You just pick ours and then your process is done. It's just that easy. We love that we can provide that high-quality instructional material really easily to be used in conjunction with the College Board resources.

Okay, so we've talked about the main curriculum and course content for teaching CS Principles, but we have a lot of extra CodeHS resources for AP teachers. We'll move over to those now. Our AP courses are offered in different programming languages, and the courses are similar but not exactly the same. Beyond that, we do also offer those extra modules in Cybersecurity if you are interested in those, and then of course the Roblox Studio Lua programming language that students can have access to with that version of the course. Definitely leave time in your pacing for our review materials. We have a 20-hour course that you can add to your students' work on the CodeHS platform once we get to May and you are ready to do some review for the exam.

Another resource that we have is our Question of the Day, and you can find these in the platform if you use the left-hand navigation. You can locate the Question of the Day. This is kind of a fun one for students: they can earn streaks by answering the Question of the Day correctly multiple days in a row, and you can see their responses. So it's also a great opportunity for some formative data to inform your teaching once you get students in the routine of answering that Question of the Day.

The Question of the Day does follow along with our curriculum. So if you are moving things around significantly in the course, the Question of the Day might not match up exactly with what you're teaching. But generally, in the first semester coursework, we'll be having coding questions for students, and they get progressively harder as students' skills grow and they're learning more coding. So definitely check out the Question of the Day.

Another resource is our Practice area. So if you are finding that maybe you have some students who would benefit from additional coding practice, whether that's in a text-based IDE or you want them to try out some Parsons problems where they can drag and drop lines of code to build a functioning program, Practice is a great place where students can go on their own or you can assign practice items to students.

We do also have an interactive textbook. We have a Python textbook and a JavaScript textbook, and those are really great resources for students to refer to as they are working through the Principles courses.

Finally, we have the AP CSP Hub. There are a hundred different exam prep resources in the AP Hub. I'm going to put a link in the chat to this, but I also want to point out... I'm going to hop over to the actual CodeHS site and show you how to navigate to these various resources.

Here I am in my CodeHS sections, and I am going to open up this AP CS Principles Python course. It's going to land me on my roster page, but we were actually taking a look at some curricular resources. On the left-hand side in the navigation—this is where all my teacher workflows reside, with this left-hand navigation in this navy blue bar—I'm going to open up this Curriculum Toolbox. Here's where I can find all of these great resources I was just pointing out to you in the slide deck.

The first one is the AP CSP Review Course. I'm going to go find that in the course catalog. Just like you would go find and set up your Principles main course in the catalog, I can also add the review course for my students from the course catalog or the assignments page.

You can also find the Question of the Day right here. Again, students have access to the Question of the Day when they log into CodeHS, but if you want to see the Question of the Day for your students, or see how your students did on the Question of the Day, you can click into that here. We'll get a little preview of today's question. All right, so this one is just asking about algorithm reading: can students interpret and write an algorithm to move from this square in the grid to the gray square in the grid? They would have to read through these options, answer the question, and see how they did. Love the Question of the Day—very, very fun for students.

Practice was the next item that also lives in the Curriculum Toolbox here, about midway down our list of apps. This is what the Practice app looks like. Again, you can assign these to students or students have access to them on their own. We have two different types: where students are going to create their own code, and then those Parsons problems where students drag and drop lines of code to make a completed program.

The textbook also lives in our curriculum under Digital Textbooks. In the Curriculum tab of the left-hand navigation, our textbooks live there. As I said, we have one for both JavaScript and Python, so I definitely recommend those as a resource to students.

Finally, we were checking out the AP Hub, and this is where lots and lots of review for students lives. You have access to the AP CSP Hub here, but would need to assign these tutorials and different resources to students, and you can also learn about our alternate exercises available for these courses. You can learn about the exam and get some information on the Create task. That's a very key part of the exam itself, and you can find extra help for students there.

All right. So let's go back to our panelists. Kim, let's ask you first: what concepts do students commonly struggle with, and what scaffolds do you put in place for those concepts?

Pattern recognition is something that they kind of struggle with: when should I type something out versus when a for loop or a while loop might be better because code repeats. Also just breaking down a more complex problem. I teach in person, so I am able to kind of walk around while students are doing those problems. What I found works best is if I can tell a student is really struggling, I will type on their computer and say, "Okay, explain to me what we need to do." That way they don't have to worry about syntax errors or indentation; I just have them tell me what to do and then I type it for them. I found that's a good way to bridge, because they usually know what to do; it's just a little bit too much sometimes to do all at the same time.

Yeah, it is tough to be thinking about the structure of the program and how the computer is going to interpret the code versus the actual characters that make up that code. So yeah, you're taking some cognitive load off the students when they're giving you the structure and the ideas, which is the important part, right? And you are taking care of the details in the syntax, which just come from practice. Honestly, it's like one of those language-learning things. As a former language teacher, I see the bridge and commonality between learning a spoken language and learning a written coding language, where there are just some things that you have to memorize, and the only way that's going to happen is repetition, repetition, repetition. Not all students love all that practice, so thank you for that recommendation.

Carlos, how about you? What is a concept you have found students struggle with, and how do you help them?

It is structural concepts, but specifically debugging. A lot of students don't quite understand that concept; they look at that as being a problem, when debugging is really the gist of programming. One of the things that I did when I was in the classroom with my students is that we did a lot of pseudocode writing and a lot of flowcharts. I would have them write it out from a pseudocode perspective because I said to them, this is not going to make sense no matter how much I present it to you if you guys don't visualize this. If you can't visualize this and make sense of it to yourself where you begin to see patterns in it, then it's going to be hard for you to actually move forward in this. So I provided opportunities where they would write out or draw out their prototypes for their flowcharts and pseudocode, have that on the side, and let's debug. Then I would do the I do, we do, you do concept with them in class.

Carlos, there's so much there that I could spend hours digging through with you: productive struggle, embracing failure, understanding that every programmer, even top-level professionals, introduces bugs into their code. I'm so happy that you brought that up because it is just something that is going to happen. For the perfectionists out there—and I am guilty, I'm a lifelong perfectionist—coding has humble-taught me how to embrace a space of being humble and vulnerable, not knowing the right answer, and just clicking run to see what happens. Debugging is so important and is a skill that must be taught. I love your suggestions for how you transferred that skill to your students. Not all students are intuitive problem solvers and tinkerers; the perfectionists among us do not like tinkering, we want to have a direct way to success. Discovery and tinkering are so important in computer science, and debugging skills definitely are something that have to be taught in the classroom. So thank you for bringing that forward.

All right, let's talk a little bit more about AP Classroom. This is a resource that is complementary and supplemental to the CodeHS curriculum, but you should have all your students join AP Classroom so that they can be prepared for exam day. It will provide you with tons of additional resources around the big ideas, organized that way on AP Classroom itself. Another option within the AP Classroom website is using questions—creating and assigning custom quizzes. There's lots of options in the question bank; it's a great resource for review and test practice, and you can filter the question bank to create something customized to your students' needs. So definitely, like we said, get registered with College Board, get your audit in, and get access to these fantastic resources that will serve as a good complement to the CodeHS curriculum.

Wow, we have covered a lot of ground here! We have gone over the courses that you can select from for teaching your students and guiding them through this Principles course. We have talked about all the additional resources in the Curriculum tab of the CodeHS website. We've talked about AP Classroom resources. It's just a lot. So let's move on from those resources to what the exam is and how we prepare students for the exam in May, because it is a rigorous one.

There are two parts to the Principles test. The first section is a multiple-choice style exam where students have 120 minutes to answer 70 multiple-choice questions, making up 70% of their AP exam score. They will see 57 single-select multiple-choice questions, 5 single-select reading passage questions, and 8 multiple-select questions where they need to find the 2 correct answers for each question.

Then, the thing you really have to help students through and hold their hands through is their Create performance task. This is 30% of their total exam score and involves a lot of pieces. Careful planning and preparation through the Create performance task process is going to be essential for your students. They need to create a program in code, create a video of their code running, and create a personalized project reference sheet that they will then be able to use on the exam. Besides understanding and explaining the program that they built, they also have two written response questions for this portion of the exam, and they get 60 minutes for the second section.

May I interject real briefly? That is very important, because I think quite a few teachers miss this in reference to the written response questions: those questions are graded in reference to conciseness. It has to be concise. They can put a lot of information and fluff in there, but one word can cause them to miss the whole entire question. So you want to make sure that they understand the question and that they're being concise in their writing as well.

Thank you for pointing that out. Yes, I have had many teachers contribute to this discussion over the years around simplicity being key in these Create performance tasks and in students' code programs. They have to understand the program that they built. They can use AI or a programming partner in class; they have resources to create any program that they want. But generally, the more complex the program they build, the less they understand it by exam time and the more confused they get. Carlos makes a great point there to keep the programs direct and minimalist, and students have to understand them in order to get their points for those written responses. Thank you for adding that.

All right. So Carlos, let's go back to the AP resources, the CodeHS curriculum, and other curriculum you've used over the years. How do you help students prepare for the exam? What is your test prep strategy?

I recommend definitely utilizing College Board. Take those practice tests—they have practice tests from previous years. Start off there by giving your students those practice tests. The earlier I gave my students that practice test when they came in, the better, just to get their feedback to see where they were and to see how they would do with such a heavy exam. I explained to them that this is not the typical AP exam that you might be used to; this one's heavier than a lot of the other ones that you've taken, like AP History, Biology, and so forth.

What I did was make sure that I offered myself during office hours, getting them in if they have issues regarding concepts. One of the things I also recommend is making sure that they're going to be there the day of the test. Ask on the very first day of class if they have a vacation set up on that date, so that they understand how to make arrangements around that. I had one student that actually did that, and thank God we were able to get them in, but it can be pretty tough. So that was my strategy: give them the practice test ahead of time, continue to build on those skills, scaffold those concepts in as needed, and your kids are going to do great.

Thank you for that. Awesome.

And Kim, what ideas or strategies do you use to put more ownership over learning in the hands of your students?

I mentioned Docs is one of my favorite tools already, but I really encourage students to try and problem-solve the answer first before asking. I also really encourage them to work with each other. They're all doing the exact same curriculum at the exact same time, so I openly encourage them to talk with the people around them. Try and solve it on your own; if you're still unsure what to do after checking Docs, ask the person next to you to see if they can help. I also pass out little rubber duckies to my older kids so that they have a partner to ask their coding questions to. Those are the main strategies: try to solve it yourself, try looking up the answer in Docs, and if that doesn't work, try asking a neighbor.

Awesome, I love those ideas. Thank you for sharing.

All right, let's spend a little time on that 30% of the test: the Create performance task. Some tips and tricks: generally our teacher trainers and other teachers who consult with CodeHS tell us that the performance task takes about two weeks for students to finish. You are required to give them nine hours of in-class time, but it can take longer for sure. You can complete it towards April, or they can finish it earlier if you want. It doesn't have to be something they build upon throughout the year or anything—just whenever you think it's best for your students. But definitely leave those nine hours of in-class work time, in addition to leaving two to three weeks to review before the AP exam itself in May.

It's good to note that when that nine-hour clock starts, you are not allowed to assist students. Once that nine-hour clock starts, you are hands-off while the student is creating that particular program and submitting it. Once it's submitted and the deadline is hit, you can't get it back; the kids won't be able to get it back.

Yes, thank you for pointing that out. There are very clear rules on help resources students can use on the performance task, and teachers are not one of them. They do need to submit their Create task before a specific deadline, and you'll want them to do that earlier than 11:59 p.m. or everybody's going to be scrambling and panicking.

The coding portion of the Create task itself must include the following: user input and some kind of output processed and given to the user; the use of at least one list in the programming language the student is working in; and a procedure or function that takes a parameter and contains sequencing, selection, and iteration. Students must be able to describe the two different function calls that execute the different parts of that function. There is some technical language here, but you'll get familiar with it—no problem. There are definitely specific requirements, and it is good advice to review the requirements of the exam and the performance task well in advance with your students.

Beyond the coded program, students provide a video of the program running—showing themselves giving the program input and output being provided back. They provide the program code to the graders and their personal project reference. All of these are due at 11:59 p.m., but it would be really wise to set up a system where you help them with the process of submission. And that video needs to be in MP4 format; MP4 format is what they ask for. All this information can be found in the CED guide for Principles, so definitely check that out on College Board.

All right, so we've covered these items. We only have a few minutes left. In summary, here are the deadlines you need to be aware of.

There's one more topic that I wanted to address before we wrap up. You have probably seen emails and communications coming from College Board that for the 2027–2028 school year, the Computer Science Principles course and exam are getting a full update from the College Board. I did just want to say that the CodeHS team is aware, we are keeping up on those communications, and we intend to have curriculum resources ready for you for the 2027–2028 school year.

All right, one more question for each of our panelists before we hop out of here. Kim, what's one way CodeHS has made your teaching easier?

Having the curriculum all in one place. I teach multiple preps, and going to CodeHS for all of them is great. I also love single sign-on so kids don't have to try and remember their passwords, which is really helpful.

Awesome. We love to hear that we are providing good, comprehensive resources that meet all of teachers' needs, so I appreciate that. Kim, you've mentioned a couple of your classroom routines. If you had to pick your favorite—one you couldn't live without or teach without—which one would it be?

I really like that I code through those activities with the kids. That's probably the one that I would pick, just modeling how I think.

All right teachers, you heard it here—try it out in your classroom!

Carlos, what's one piece of advice you'd give new AP CS Principles teachers who are starting teaching tomorrow?

Get a CodeHS account if you don't have one! I'm quite sure Kim can attest to this—it is a game-changer. I think what we offer here will help a teacher that's just starting out. It has the pacing there for you, it has the lessons there for you, and it has all of those resources that are going to help you and your students be successful regarding CS, specifically in the area of the actual test itself. So that would be my advice: get CodeHS. If you need to start off with our freemium version, go ahead, but I recommend getting Pro because it is a life-changer.

Awesome. Well, thank you for that, and we are right on time, ready to wrap up. If you need anything else from CodeHS, or if we can provide you with any additional help, please let us know. Anything we've talked about today—Question of the Day or practice problems—you can learn more about in our Knowledge Base, which is a searchable database. You can also write in to our support team with questions about curriculum or the platform.

If you would like to learn more about the AP CS Principles exam, we do webinars on them pretty much quarterly. So if you want to go back and watch our summer deep dive on AP CSP, you can do that. I've put a link in the chat to our webinar library. Stay connected with us in any way you can; if you've got social media accounts, we post frequently on those and provide updates on PD, courses, and all the great content we have.

For the last thing I'll ask you to do today, attendees: please fill out our survey. We take feedback very seriously here at CodeHS. All of our teams constantly ask educators how we can help better next time, so please take a moment to fill out our webinar survey and let us know how we did today and what topics you might want to learn more about in the future. As you are filling out that survey, I will remind you that your certificate of completion will be automatically emailed to you; please allow 48 hours for receipt of your certificate.

I will put in a shameless plug for our upcoming back-to-school webinars. I have two left: next week, Teaching with AI, and Your First Month Teaching AP Cybersecurity. This is a brand new course from the College Board, and we are helping teachers launch their first month of this brand new course, so please feel free to join us.

Thank you so much, Carlos. Thank you so much, Kim. This has been fantastic. I appreciate all your expert advice; we couldn't have done it without you. That brings us to the end. We'll see you all later. Have a great school year!