Intro to Computer Science

Week 33: Monday, April 27th – Friday, May 1st

Hello again! I hope you're ready for a full five-day week; we haven't had one for a while. For the rest of the school year, we'll be working on our Final Project, so I expect you to make something impressive!

Make sure you cheer for our graduating seniors at the E3 Celebration on Friday! I hope you all have a wonderful week, and as always, please let me know if you have any questions.

Week 30: Tuesday, April 7th – Friday, April 10th

Hi there, and welcome back from your extended weekend! This week, we'll continue our work on Unit 11: 2D Lists and Board Games:

• Monday, April 6th: NO SCHOOL

• work on 11.2 Board Games (Battleship and 2048)

Next week we'll have shortened periods due to state-mandated testing (boo!). Fortunately, we're going to be starting our final project soon, so we should be fine despite all the interruptions. I hope you have a great first full week of April, and as always, please let me know if you have any questions!

Week 29: Monday, March 30th – Thursday, April 2nd

Hello again everyone, and welcome back from Spring Break! We only have nine more weeks of school, much of which will be broken up by extended weekends and state testing, so it should go by pretty quickly. Here's the plan for this short week as we tackle one of our most challenging topics to date, two-dimensional (2D) Lists, also known as tables, grids, or matrices:

• start Unit 11: 2D Lists and Board Games

• 11.1 2D Lists

• start 11.2 Board Games

• Friday, April 3rd: NO SCHOOL

This unit can be pretty challenging, so we'll work on these exercises together as a class. I hope you have a great week back from break, and please let me know if you have any questions!

Week 28: Monday, March 16th – Friday, March 20th

Welcome to 4th Quarter and the last week before Spring Break! 😎 Here's the plan as we wrap up Unit 10: Lists and Return Values:

• finish 10.4 Unit 10 Exercises

• Unit 10 Creative Task

• Unit 10 Practice Quiz

• Unit 10 Quiz

When we come back from Spring Break, we'll start Unit 11: 2D Lists and Board Games, which can be pretty challenging so we'll work on those exercises together as a class. Thanks for all of your hard work in the course so far, and have a fun and relaxing Spring Break! 🩴

Week 27: Monday, March 9th – Friday, March 13th

We've made it to the end of 3rd Quarter! After this week, we'll only have one week of classes before we all get a well-deserved week off for Spring Break. Here's the plan as we start Unit 10: Lists and Return Values:

• 10.1 Lists

• 10.2 List Methods

• 10.3 Return Values

• 10.4 Unit 10 Exercises

Friday, March 13th is the end of 3rd Quarter, so please make sure you have everything through Unit 9 completed by then. It's also an early release day! Unit 10 will go on 4th Quarter.

I hope you're not too cranky from the time change. Have a great week, and as always, please let me know if you have any questions!

Week 26: Monday, March 2nd – Friday, March 6th

Hello again, and welcome to March! Here's the plan for this week as we finish Unit 9: Types, Strings, and While Loops:

• 9.5 Unit 9 Exercises

• Unit 9 Creative Task

• Unit 9 Review

• Unit 9 Practice Quiz

• Unit 9 Quiz

Unit 9 will be the last unit that goes on 3rd Quarter grades; we'll start Unit 10 next week, but those assignments will go on 4th Quarter. Spring is just around the corner, so hang in there, and please let me know if you have any questions!

Week 25: Monday, February 23rd – Friday, February 27th

Welcome to the end of February! To wrap up Black History Month, I'd like to tell you about John Henry Thompson (b. 1959), the creator of the influential Lingo programming language. The son of Jamaican immigrants, Mr. Thompson got his first opportunity to work with a computer as a 10th grader at the Bronx High School of Science when his geometry teacher, Ms. Strauss, gave him early access to the math department's computer lab and helped him get his first job as a computer operator in the New York State Psychiatric Institute. After graduation, he earned his Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Visual Studies from MIT in 1983 and continued on as a technical instructor, developed an early color pre-press design system for the Visible Language Workshop, which is now part of the MIT Media Lab. Mr. Thompson then became a project lead at Lucasfilm on the EditDroid project, an early nonlinear editing system that was a precursor to Final Cut, the industry standard in video editing. In 1987 he joined Macromedia (now part of Adobe), where he contributed to the development of a number of products, including Macromedia Director, and he invented the Lingo programming language and XObjects, which made it easier to create interactive multimedia content like Flash, Shockwave and graphics-based CD-ROMs. If you've ever played an interactive game in a web browser, his work helped make that possible! For the past two decades, Mr. Thompson has continued teaching in New York City, Philadelphia, Jamaica, and online, and he has since become an outspoken critic of social media companies such as Facebook for how they use personal data and what he describes as their negative impacts on society.

Here's the plan for this week as we continue our work in Unit 9: Types, Strings, and While Loops:

• 9.2 Strings

• Wednesday, Feb. 25th: ACT – NO SCHOOL for Sophomores & Seniors; good luck, Freshmen & Juniors!

• 9.3 String Methods

• 9.4 While Loops

Good luck to the Freshmen and Juniors taking tests on Wednesday! Remember, no school for Sophomores and Seniors. After this week, we'll only have two weeks before the end of 3rd Quarter, and then another week after that will be Spring Break. Hang in there, get caught up on your missing work, and have a great week! Please let me know if you have any questions at all.

Week 24: Tuesday, February 17th – Friday, February 20th

Good morning! I hope you've been enjoying your extended four-day weekend. This week I'd like to tell you about Dr. Clarence "Skip" Ellis (1943-2014), the first Black person to earn a PhD in computer science. Dr. Ellis grew up in Chicago and graduated from Parker High School while also working as a part-time night shift security guard for the Dover Corporation. While at Dover, he watched over the company's mainframe computers and became fascinated by them, so he read over the manuals during his shift and learned how to operate and repair the vacuum-tube-based machines. He earned degrees in mathematics and physics from Beloit College in Wisconsin, and while at Beloit, he was one of 10 North American college students to attend a computer science program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Based on his experiences there, he earned his PhD in computer science from Urbana-Champaign in 1969, making him the first Black person to ever do so. Dr. Ellis worked at Bell Labs, IBM, and Xerox, and from 1976–1984, he worked at the Palo Alto Research Center, where he led the team that created Officetalk, the first program to use icons and the Internet to allow for long-distance collaboration. This means that every icon-based app or operating system you've ever used was directly influenced by Skip Ellis. You could say he's "iconic"! (Sorry.)

Here's the plan for this short week as we wrap up Unit 8 and start Unit 9: Types, Strings, and While Loops:

• finish Unit 8 Creative Task

• Unit 8 Review

• Unit 8 Practice Quiz

• Unit 8 Quiz

• 9.1 Types and Input

Strings are pretty easy, but as always, please let me know if you have any questions. Have a great week, and please let me know if you have any questions!

Week 23: Monday, February 9th – Thursday, February 12th

Hello again, I hope you've stayed warm during this cold weekend! This week I'd like to tell you about Dr. Timnit Gebru, a Black computer scientist who studies artificial intelligence (AI), algorithmic bias and data mining. Dr. Gebru was born in Ethiopia and fled the Eritrean–Ethiopian War when she was 15, eventually receiving political asylum in the United States. She earned her bachelor's and master's degrees as well as her PhD from Stanford University. While at Stanford, she worked as an intern at Apple making audio circuitry and later developed signal processing algorithms for the first iPad. After brief stint at Microsoft where she investigated racial bias in facial recognition software, she joined Google in 2018 to co-lead a team the ethics of artificial intelligence. However, in late 2020, her employment at Google was terminated when she refused to withdraw a research paper about the serious risks of large language model AI systems (Dr. Gebru claims that she was fired, while Google has refused to say whether she resigned or was terminated). Since leaving Google, Dr. Gebru has co-founded Black in AI, a community of Black researchers working in AI, and the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR), a "space for independent, community-rooted AI research, free from Big Tech's pervasive influence". She has earned numerous accolades, including being named one of the world's 50 greatest leaders by Fortune Magazine in 2021 and one of Time Magazine's most influential people of 2022.

Here's the plan for this abbreviated week as we continue Unit 8: Math Functions, Random Values, and Nested Loops:

• finish 8.3 Nested For Loops

• 8.4 Unit 8 Exercises

• start Unit 8 Creative Task

There will be no school for students on Friday, February 13th and Monday, February 16th. Next week, we'll take our Unit 8 Quiz, so make sure you don't forget everything during your time off. Have a great week, and enjoy your 4-day weekend!

Week 22: Monday, February 2nd – Friday, February 6th

Welcome to February, and Happy Black History Month! Before I list this week's activities, I'd like to tell you about Dorothy J. Vaughan (1910–2008), the first African-American female supervisor of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) who became an expert in digital computers and their applications in NASA programs. Ms. Vaughan graduated from Wilberforce University in Ohio with a degree in mathematics and started out as a math teacher. In 1943, to support our country's efforts in World War II, she joined NACA as a human "computer" who did complex calculations for engineers and scientists. She worked with computers Vera Huckel and Sara Bullock to create an algebraic methods handbook for mechanical calculating machines, and when NACA became NASA, she joined its new Analysis and Computation Division and became an expert FORTRAN programmer. Ms. Vaughan and her countless calculations supported NACA and NASA accomplishments and helped to achieve our country’s aerospace goals. Very impressive!

Here's the plan for this week as we continue Unit 8: Math Functions, Random Values, and Nested Loops:

• finish 8.1 Math Functions

• 8.2 Random Values

• start 8.3 Nested For Loops

This will be our last full week of school for a while, because for the next three weeks we'll only have four school days each week due to teacher in-service, a holiday and the ACT. I hope you have a great week, and as always, let me know if you have any questions!

Week 21: Thursday, January 29th – Friday, January 30th

Wow, another four-day a five-day weekend! I hope you've enjoyed your time off and remember how to code. 😂 Here's the plan for yet another abbreviated week as we start Unit 8:

• Unit 7 Practice Quiz

• Unit 7 Quiz

• start Unit 8: Math Functions, Random Values, and Nested Loops

• 8.1 Math Functions

Unit 8 includes one of my favorite topics in CS - random values! I think you'll have a lot of fun with this unit. Please let me know if you have any questions!

Week 20: Tuesday, January 20th – Friday, January 23rd

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day! I hope you've enjoyed your threefour-day weekend. On Thursday, we'll take our rescheduled field trip to the KSU Computer Science Department, and then we'll wrap up Unit 7. Here's the plan:

• Unit 7 Creative Task

• Thursday, 1/22: Rescheduled field trip to Kent State's Computer Science Department! Meet in the auditorium atrium to leave no later than 8:40am. We'll eat lunch at school during 8th period when we come back at noon. I'll let you know if any of these details change!

• Unit 7 Practice Quiz

• Unit 7 Quiz

Enjoy your extra-short week of school!

Week 19: Monday, January 12th – Friday, January 16th

Hello again, and congratulations on surviving the first week of 2026! On Thursday, we'll take a field trip to the Kent State Computer Science Department to see what opportunities they have to offer. Here's the plan:

• finish 7.3 For Loops

• 7.4 Unit 7 Exercises

• Unit 7 Creative Task

• Thursday, 1/15: Field trip to Kent State's Computer Science Department! Meet in the auditorium atrium to leave no later than 8:40am. We'll eat lunch at school during 8th period when we come back at noon. I'll let you know if any of these details change!

Should be a very straightforward week! Please let me know if you have any questions. Enjoy your three-day weekend!

Week 18: Monday, January 5th – Friday, January 9th

Happy New Year 🥳, and welcome back from Winter Break! I hope you were able to take some time to rest, relax and recharge before we get right back to coding. Here's the plan for our first school week of 2026 as we start Unit 7: New Shapes, Local Variables, and For Loops:

• review 1st Semester Exam

• 7.1 New Shapes

• 7.2 Local Variables

• 7.3 For Loops

Arcs are a little challenging, but everything else this week should be pretty straightforward. Next week, we'll go on a field trip to the Kent State Computer Science Department. I hope you have a great first week back! As always, please let me know if you have any questions.

Week 17: Monday, December 15th – Friday, December 19th

Welcome to exam week! The plan is pretty straightforward – study for the 1st Semester Exam on Thursday so you can earn the best grade possible and enjoy your Winter Break. Here's the schedule for this week:

Mon. 12/15 & Tue. 12/16

• work on Practice Quizzes for Units 1-6

Wed. 12/17

• 1st period exam – 7:30-9:00am

• 2nd period exam – 9:15-10:45am

• Lunch – 10:50-11:20am

• 6/7th or 7/8th period exam – 11:25am-12:55pm

• Open study – 1:10-2:29pm

Thu. 12/18

• 9th period exam – 7:30-9:00am

• 10th period exam – 9:15-10:45am

• Lunch – 10:50-11:20am

• Make-up exams – 11:25am-12:55pm

• Open study – 1:10-2:29pm

Fri. 12/19

• 3rd period exam – 7:30-9:00am

• 4/5th or 5/6th period exam – 9:15-10:45am

• Lunch – 10:50-11:20am

• Make-up exams – 11:25am-12:55pm

• Open study – 1:10-2:29pm

• DUE: ANY OUTSTANDING WORK FROM 2nd QUARTER MUST BE COMPLETED BY TODAY!

I'll also send out the exam schedule flyer on Parent Square and on Google Classroom as a picture so you can save it to your phone. Good luck on this exam and all of your other exams this week! Please let me know if you have any questions at all. I hope you have a wonderful and relaxing Winter Break, and I'll see you in 2026!

Week 16: Monday, December 8th – Friday, December 12th

We've finally made it to the last full week of 1st Semester! After next week's exams, you'll be halfway done with the school year. Here's the plan:

• finish 6.4 Unit 6 Exercises

• Unit 6 Practice Quiz

• Unit 6 Quiz

This should be a straightforward week! Please let me know if you have any questions.

Week 15: Monday, December 1st – Friday, December 5th

Welcome back from break! I hope you enjoyed your week off and got lots of rest and relaxation. We only have two weeks left to complete Unit 6 before taking our 1st Semester Exam. Here's the plan for the first week of December:

• finish 6.3 Step Events and Motion - Notes and Exercises

• 6.4 Unit 6 Exercises

Next week, we'll complete the Unit 6 Creative Task and Unit 6 Quiz, and then we can begin preparing for your 1st Semester Exam, which will be on Thursday, December 18th. I hope you have a great week, and as always, please let me know if you have any questions!

Week 14: Monday, November 17th – Friday, November 21st

We've finally made it to Thanksgiving Break! For this last week before break, we're going to start our last unit in the semester – Unit 6: Groups, Step Events, and Motion. Step events are awesome, you're going to love them! Here's the plan:

• start Unit 6: Groups, Step Events, and Motion

• 6.1 Groups - Notes and Exercises

• 6.2 Group Methods - Notes and Exercises

• start 6.3 Step Events and Motion - Notes and Exercises

Parents and guardians: please note that we have Parent-Teacher Conferences on Tuesday, November 25th from 8am-3:30pm. You can use this link to sign up for any available spot to discuss how your child is doing in my class. It would be great to talk with you!

This will be a nice place to pause until we return from break and tackle the rest of Unit 6. If you're behind in the course, you should use some of your free time over break to get caught up as much as you can. You can message me on StudentSquare if you have any questions or need any help with your code. I hope you have a restful and relaxing Thanksgiving Break, and I'll see you in December!

Week 13: Monday, November 10th – Friday, November 14th

Hello, future computer scientists! This week, we're going to wrap up Unit 5: Complex Conditionals and More Key Events:

• finish 5.3 Unit 5 Exercises

• Unit 5 Creative Task

• Unit 5 Practice Quiz

• Unit 5 Quiz

Here's hoping the power stays on at school this week! Stay warm, and please let me know if you have any questions.

Week 12: Monday, November 3rd – Friday, November 7th

Hello again, I hope you enjoyed your extra hour of sleep this morning! For this week in Intro to CS, we're going to continue our work in Unit 5: Complex Conditionals and More Key Events. Here's what we're doing for the first week of November:

• finish 5.1 Complex Conditionals - Notes and Exercises

• 5.2 More Key Events - Notes and Exercises

• 5.3 Unit 5 Exercises

I hope the time change doesn't make you too cranky this week! 😴 As always, please let me know if you have any questions.

Week 11: Monday, October 27th – Friday, October 31st

It's my favorite time of the year – Halloween! 👻 Here's the plan for this spooky week as we wrap up Unit 4 and move on to Unit 5 🎃:

• finish Unit 4 Creative Task

• Unit 4 Review

• Unit 4 Practice Quiz

• Unit 4 Quiz

• start Unit 5: Complex Conditionals and More Key Events

• 5.1 Complex Conditionals - Notes and Exercises

Complex conditionals let us combine if statements so that we can test multiple conditions at the same time. For example, did the user click on a specific shape while it's on the top half of the canvas? Complex conditionals give us a lot more control over how our programs behave, and they're used throughout computer science, including in AI.

Do your best to not overdose on candy 🍬, and please let me know if you have any questions. I hope you have a great week!

Week 10: Tuesday, October 21st – Friday, October 24th

Welcome back from your second 3-day weekend! During this abbreviated week, we'll begin to wrap up our work on Unit 4: More Conditionals, Key Events, and Methods. Here's what we're doing for the first week of 2nd Quarter:

• finish 4.3 Methods - Notes and Exercises

• 4.4 Unit 4 Exercises

• start Unit 4 Creative Task

As always, please let me know if you have any questions. Have a wonderful week!

Week 9: Monday, October 13th – Friday, October 17th

Welcome to the end of 1st Quarter! It may be hard to believe, but after this week, we'll be 25% done with the school year. For this week in Intro to CS, we're going to move on to Unit 4, which will allow us to detect keystrokes. Here's what we're doing this week:

• start Unit 4: More Conditionals, Key Events, and Methods

• 4.1 More Conditionals (if-elif-else Statements) - Notes and Exercises

• 4.2 Key Events - Notes and Exercises

• start 4.3 Methods - Notes and Exercises

FYI Friday is an Early Release Day and it's also the end of 1st Quarter. Make sure you're caught up with all of your work through Unit 3.

Congratulations on making it this far! You're getting another 3-day weekend, so I hope you enjoy it as much as the one you just had. Please let me know if you have any questions. Have a great week!

Week 8: Monday, October 6th – Thursday, October 9th

Hello again! It may be Autumn on the calendar, but it sure doesn't feel like it. This week, we're going to wrap up our work on Unit 3 with the creative task. Here's what we're doing for this abbreviated week:

• Unit 3 Creative Task

• Unit 3 Review

• Unit 3 Practice Quiz

• Unit 3 Quiz

FYI Parent-teacher conferences are from 5-8pm on Thursday, October 9th; you can use this link to sign up! Also, there will be no school for students on Friday due to a teacher PD day. If you're behind, you should use the long three-day weekend to get caught up before 1st Quarter ends next Friday.

I hope you enjoy this short week! Please let me know if you have any questions.

Week 7: Monday, September 29th – Friday, October 3rd

And just like that, it's October! 🎃 I hope the new school year is going well for you so far. This week, we'll continue our work on Unit 3: Mouse Motion Events, Conditionals, and Helper Functions. Here's the plan for this week:

• finish 3.2 Conditionals (if Statements) - Notes and Exercises

• 3.3 Helper Functions - Notes and Exercises

• 3.4 Unit 3 Exercises

Parents: Please use this link to sign up for Parent-Teacher Conferences on Thursday, October 9th. You can also reach out to me through email any time you have any questions or concerns.

If statements are one of the fundamental concepts of all of computer science, so I think you'll find this unit to be interesting and it'll help explain how computers work in general. I hope you have a great week!

Week 6: Monday, September 22nd – Friday, September 26th

Hello again, and welcome to fall! 🍂 This week, we'll wrap up our work on Unit 2 and move on to Unit 3: Mouse Motion Events, Conditionals, and Helper Functions – should be a fun week after Homecoming weekend. Here's the plan:

• finish Unit 2 Creative Task

• Unit 2 Review

• Unit 2 Practice Quiz

• Unit 2 Quiz

• start Unit 3: Mouse Motion Events, Conditionals, and Helper Functions

• 3.1 Mouse Motion Events - Notes and Exercises

• start 3.2 Conditionals (if Statements) - Notes and Exercises  

I hope you fun this past weekend and you're looking forward to a great week. Please let me know if you have any questions!

Week 5: Monday, September 15th – Friday, September 19th

Welcome to the last week of summer! Here's the plan for this week as we continue our exploration of functions, mouse events, and properties:

• finish 2.2 Mouse Events - Notes and Exercises

• 2.3 Properties - Notes and Exercises

• 2.4 Unit 2 Exercises

• start Unit 2 Creative Task

I hope you have fun at all of the Homecoming festivities! As always, let me know if you have any questions. Have a great week!

Week 4: Monday, September 8th – Friday, September 12th

Hello, future computer scientists! Here's what we're doing in class this week as we wrap up our first unit in the course and move on to Unit 2:

• finish Unit 1 Creative Task

• Unit 1 Review

• Unit 1 Practice Quiz

• Unit 1 Quiz

• start Unit 2: Functions, Mouse Events, and Properties

• 2.1 Functions - Notes and Exercises

• start 2.2 Mouse Events - Notes and Exercises  

Unit 2 is a lot of fun because we'll start to make our drawings interactive by coding them so that they change when we click on certain shapes. Have a wonderful week, and let me know if you have any questions!

Week 3: Tuesday, September 2nd – Friday, September 5th

I hope you enjoyed your 3-day weekend! Here's what we're doing in class this week as we begin to wrap up Unit 1:

• 1.4 Unit 1 Exercises

• start Unit 1 Creative Task

Since you're in a computer science class, you should consider joining the RHS Coders Club! We meet after school on Tuesdays in Room 211 (the same classroom you're already in for AP CS A), and everyone is welcome regardless of coding ability. It would be great to have you!

As always, please let me know if you have any questions. Have a great abbreviated week!

Week 2: Monday, August 25th – Friday, August 29th

Welcome to the first full week of school! I hope that school has started well for you and any issues with your schedule have all been worked out. Now that we've had a few days to get to know each other and get everyone logged in to CMU CS Academy, we can get to work! Here's what we're doing in class this week:

• 1.2 Colors - Notes and Exercises

• 1.3 Shapes - Notes and Exercises

We'll be using these colors and shapes throughout the entire course, so make sure you complete as many exercises as you can. Fortunately, they're all pretty easy. Let me know you have any questions, and have a great week!

Week 1: Thursday, August 21st – Friday, August 22nd

Welcome to the 2025-2026 school year! I'm excited to have you in class, and I hope you're looking forward to a good year of learning about computer science.

Computer Science (CS) is the theoretical, scientific, and mathematical approach to information and its computation. Intro to Computer Science ("Intro CS") focuses on computing skills related to programming in Python, an industry standard, high-level language. In this class, we will use Carnegie Mellon University’s Computer Science Academy, a teacher-led, online, interactive high school computer science curriculum that teaches coding through developing games. Students work at their own pace and get help from me when they get stuck. I believe that every student can learn computer science!

Here's what we're doing in class for the first week of school:

• Welcome to Computer Science! - first day presentation

• get logged in to CMU CS Academy

• 1.1 Basics - Notes and Exercises

I hope you have a great first week and that you're able to get some rest this weekend before we attempt to go to school for five full days without strange bell schedules or burning birds. Let me know you have any questions!