The ASSIST-MSCS teacher resources are designed to support middle school teachers teaching computer science (CS). Specifically, they relate to five standards in the middle school ‘Algorithms and Programming’ (AP) strand, as listed below. All state standards in the U.S. typically build off these standards put forth by the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA).
- 2-AP-10: Use flowcharts and/or pseudocode to address complex problems as algorithms.
- 2-AP-11: Create clearly named variables that represent different data types and perform operations on their values.
- 2-AP-12: Design and iteratively develop programs that combine control structures, including nested loops and compound conditionals.
- 2-AP-13: Decompose problems and subproblems into parts to facilitate the design, implementation, and review of programs.
- 2-AP-14: Create procedures with parameters to organize code and make it easier to reuse.
For each of the five standards, ASSIST teacher resources include:
- Educative resources that describe the scope of the standard, unpack the standards into fine-grained learning targets, provide examples of the learning targets in three different programming languages, and describe common student challenges associated with the learning targets.
- Formative assessments aligned with learning targets that constitute the standard, along with assessment design templates and detailed rubrics for diagnosing student understanding.
- Teacher professional development (PD) sessions that facilitate understanding of the standards by leveraging the teacher educative resources and formative assessment resources.