There are only 9 week lesson

VEXcode VR
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I would like to know how or what you do for your class when you have 12 week semesters and your classs time is about 75 min class period. My class go through the lessons really fast. I am not able to make them last a week. This is my first year teaching with Vexcode. I need all the help I can get. Thank you

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Hey Tina, welcome to the PLC.

I am assuming that you are referring to the CS Level 1 block course.

There are a couple things you can do for VEX VR.

  1. You can use VEX VR activities as a supplement to the existing course content. VEX VR Activities | VEX Education
    We also have a pacing guide for you to link between the activity and unit. VR - Computer Science Level 1 Pacing Guide - Google Sheets
  2. You can use some of the activity labs as well. VEXcode VR Activity Labs | VEX Education
  3. If you still have students going really fast, you can introduce Switch mode to them which would help them to transition from block-based programming to text-based programming. https://kb.vex.com/hc/en-us/articles/13740239993876
  4. You can always start to pulling in Python course material towards the end. But note, this might be a bit too difficult for some of the students.

Lastly, if you have PD+ all access or VEX VR Premium License, you can schedule a 1-to-1 session with one of us from the education team. We are more than happy to chat with you in detail about your current plan and how you can teach VEXcode VR better.

Please let us know if this helps and if you have any additional questions.

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Hi Tina! Here are some suggestions I use in my classroom. Feel free to reach out and we can discuss further.

  1. Have the students write out their ideas and pseudocode for their different activities in an engineering notebook. This is a great way to see what they are thinking, can give you an assessment to use for grading, and gives them something tangible to take home.
  2. Have students break up into two groups and give them different assignments (ex: trace different shapes in the Shape Tracer playground). Then have the groups share their projects with each other, discussing what went well, how they did it, etc.
  3. Use the Pen feature!- My students loved drawing with the pen and making unique drawings. We turned a couple into competitions and even hung some up for our Art Show. We did Halloween and Christmas themed drawings as well as “It’s a Great Day to be a Viking” theme for Spirit week. I gave them some parameters about using x amount of colors, lines, etc. for the competitions.
  4. Make it physical- If you do have physical robots, we recreated some of the playgrounds in physical form and them analyzed what we would change and adapt to complete the challenges.
  5. Use Switch- We used the Switch Blocks to start transitioning to Python. We started by taking successful projects that they did and converted them to Switch to see how it ran in text. It didn’t seem so overwhelming for them and I had all my students using Python to some degree at the end of the semester.
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