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Teaching a Lesson with CodeHS: Best Practices for your Classroom
Teaching a Lesson with CodeHS: Best Practices for your Classroom

How to use CodeHS platform and tools to create a dynamic lesson for your classroom

Gary Gould avatar
Written by Gary Gould
Updated over a week ago

This guide walks through the flow of a typical CodeHS lesson and highlights some helpful tools to use when working with your class. It references tools available with the Pro and Free plans. Check out this article to learn more about the full range of tools available on the Pro plan.

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Preparing for Your Lesson

Most CodeHS lessons start with a video, then move to a short check for understanding quiz. This is followed by example programs and coding exercises. To help prep for a lesson, CodeHS provides these helpful resources:

  • Check out the lesson plan page, which has detailed Problem Guides, Vocabulary, Handouts, Planning notes, Teaching Strategies, and Discussion Questions for the topics covered.

    Note: only the first 5 lesson plans of a course are available with the Free Plan

  • You can also Preview the Curriculum as a student beforehand in order to know what to expect for students.

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Working through the Video and Slides

  • Videos are also available as a slide show, so you can work through them as a class or pause to go over concepts more in-depth.

  • Creating a sandbox program is a helpful tool for code-alongs or for demonstrating sample code for the class. In the Sandbox, you can create a blank program in any supported coding language. You can also share your sandbox program with students, allowing them to edit, run, or copy any code you've written during the lesson.

Giving feedback for Quizzes and Tests

  • By default, students will see the answers for check for understanding quizzes that follow the videos. Visit the Quiz Settings page to adjust this setting. You can also create custom quizzes, or copy and edit quizzes in the CodeHS curriculum. This gives you control of how to assess students, and allows you to give them feedback as they take a quiz.

  • Accessing the Quiz Scores Page will show you the most commonly missed questions at a glance, allowing you to target those concepts with your class.

Checking Your Student's Progress

  • You can track student progress to see who has started an assignment, who has submitted, and how long students are spending on each assignment.

Helping with common issues and Debugging

Extending the Lesson

CodeHS allows you to customize your curriculum and assignments in order to fit your students needs. Here are just a few options of what you can do to extend, enhance, or focus a lesson around a topic or skill:

  • You can create custom assignments to target certain skills or challenge students with your own coding exercises. You can even create free response assignments, link to external videos, and more!

  • Students can also collaborate in real-time through their sandbox programs if you're looking to do group-work or team activities with you class.
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Webinar: Behind the Scenes of a CodeHS Lesson

Hosted on September 14th, 2021

To get Pro for your school or sign up for a Pro trial, contact our team at hello@codehs.com. We'd be happy to chat!

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