AP Computer Science A

Week 35: Monday, May 11th – Friday, May 15th

This is it – welcome to AP exam week! For those of you taking the AP Computer Science A exam, you'll take it on Friday, May 15th at 12:00pm in the Wrestling Room using your school-issued Chromebook, so make sure it's completely charged and ready to go.

Seniors, this is your last week of high school! 😱 Graduation is right around the corner, so please keep in touch and let me know how you're doing as you navigate adulthood.

I hope you all have a wonderful week, and as always, please let me know if you have any questions!

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 either be prepping for the AP CS A exam on Friday, May 15th, or working independently on other coding curricula or projects.

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

Welcome to 4th Quarter! We've finished all the content for AP Computer Science A, so to keep our programming skills sharp as we prep for the AP exam in May, we're going to work on problems from last year's Baldwin Wallace High School Programming Contest. This week, we're going to try to solve Two-Factor Note Passing, Island Plots, and Traffic Lights.

Thanks for all of your hard work so far this school year, 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 wrap up Unit 9: Recursion (it's a pun, get it?):

• Unit 9: Lesson 4 - Merge Sort

• Assignment 9: Anagrams

• Unit 9 Exam 🥨

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!

Next week, we'll start prepping for the Baldwin Wallace High School Programming Contest in April. Should be fun!

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 start our final required unit in AP CS A, Unit 9: Recursion: 😱

• start Unit 9: Recursion

• Unit 9: Lesson 1 - Intro to Recursion

• Unit 9: Lesson 2 - Recursive Functions With Returns

• Unit 9 Quiz

• Unit 9: Lesson 3 - Binary Search

Recursion is a very unusual and challenging topic, but it's not a significant portion of the AP exam, so if you never fully understand it, that's fine. 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 wrap up Unit 8: 2D Array:

• Assignment 8: Battleship

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

• Unit 8 Exam

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, 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 abbreviated week as we start Unit 8: 2D Array:

• start Unit 8: 2D Array

• Unit 8: Lesson 1 – 2D Arrays

• Unit 8: Lesson 2 – 2D Array Algorithms

Have a great week, and enjoy the warmer weather!

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 start to wrap up Unit 7: ArrayList:

• finish Unit 7: Lesson 6 - Insertion Sort

• Unit 7: Lesson 7 – Wider Impacts of Data Collection

• Assignment 7: Game Wheel (we'll do this one together in class)

• Unit 7 Exam

There will be no school for students on Friday, February 13th and Monday, February 16th. If we can get through the Unit 7 Exam this week, then you can forget everything about ArrayLists over the long weekend. 😂 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 7: ArrayList:

• Unit 7: Lesson 3 - Array Algorithms with ArrayLists

• Unit 7 Quiz 🎈

• Unit 7: Lesson 4 - Linear Search

• Unit 7: Lesson 5 - Selection Sort

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 state 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:

• start Unit 7: ArrayList

• Unit 7: Lesson 1 - ArrayList

• Unit 7: Lesson 2 - Traversing ArrayLists

ArrayLists are much more flexible and easy to use than arrays, so I think you'll prefer using them going forward in the class. As always, I hope you have a great week! 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 we'll wrap up Unit 6: Array:

• Assignment 6: Array Statistics

• 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 6 Exam 👟

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 Unit 6: Lesson 3 - Arrays of Strings

• Unit 6 Quiz

• Unit 6: Lesson 4 - Algorithms on Arrays

• 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!

• Unit 6: Lesson 5 - The Enhanced For Loop

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 into coding. Here's the plan for our first school week of 2026 as we start our work on Unit 6: Array, which is a much more straightforward concept than objects:

• review 1st Semester Exam

• start Unit 6: Array

• Unit 6: Lesson 1 - One-Dimensional Arrays

• Unit 6: Lesson 2 - Traversing an Array

• Unit 6: Lesson 3 - Arrays of Strings

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 1st Semester Practice Exam (on AP Classroom)

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 Assignment 5: Player

• Unit 5 Exam 🦒 

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 our unit on classes before taking our 1st Semester Exam. Here's the plan for the first week of December:

• Unit 5: Lesson 6 - Constructors

• Unit 5: Lesson 7 - Documenting a class

• Unit 5: Lesson 8 - Static vs. Instance

• start Assignment 5: Player

Next week, we'll take the Unit 5 Exam and then begin completing AP Classroom Progress Checks in preparation 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! This week, we'll continue our work to prepare to write our own classes in Java. Here's the plan:

• Unit 5: Lesson 3 - Parameters - Primitive vs. Class

• Unit 5: Lesson 4 - Return Methods

• Unit 5 Quiz 🥪 

• Unit 5: Lesson 5 - Classes - The Basics

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!

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 start our last major topic of 1st Semester – classes! Classes sound complicated but they're simply blueprints for the objects that we've been using since the beginning of the course, so I'm confident you'll be able to pick them up pretty quickly. Here's the plan for this week:

• Unit 4: Lesson 6 - Algorithm Efficiency

• Assignment 4: String Shortener

• Unit 4 Exam 🪥 

• start Unit 5: Writing Classes

• Unit 5: Lesson 1 - Void Methods

• Unit 5: Lesson 2 - Parameters

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!

This week, we have a field trip on Wednesday, November 5th to the 12th Annual Passport to Careers at the Tri-C Corporate College East Campus in Warrensville Heights. We'll be leaving right after 1st period, so meet at the cafeteria entrance doors at 8:25am on Wednesday morning. Lunch will be provided at the event. It wouldn't hurt to dress in "business casual" attire – you might be able to make some business connections that help for the future!

In addition to the field trip, here's what we're doing this week:

• Unit 4 Quiz 🐧 

• Unit 4: Lesson 4 - Algorithms for Strings

• Unit 4: Lesson 5 - Nested Loops

• Unit 4: Lesson 6 - Algorithm Efficiency

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 continue our work on Unit 4: Iteration 🎃:

• Unit 4: Lesson 1½ - Tracing Code

• Unit 4: Lesson 2 - Algorithms for Numbers

• Unit 4: Lesson 3 - The For Loop

• Unit 4 Quiz 🐧 

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 wrap up our work on Unit 3: Boolean Expressions and if Statements. Here's what we're doing for the first week of 2nd Quarter:

• finish Assignment 3: Crack the Code!

• Unit 3 Exam 🐘

• start Unit 4: Iteration

• Unit 4: Lesson 1 - While Loops

If you haven't already, please bring in your media waivers for November's field trip. Please let me know if you have any questions. Have a wonderful week!

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

Welcome back from your 3-day weekend! This week, we'll begin to wrap up our work on Boolean expressions and if statements. Here's what we're doing for the last week of 1st Quarter:

• Unit 3: Lesson 4 - Logical Operators and Truth Tables

• Unit 3: Lesson 5 - Short Circuit Evaluation

• Unit 3: Lesson 6 - De Morgan's Law

• Unit 3: Lesson 7 - Comparing Objects

• start Assignment 3: Crack the Code!

Friday is an "Early Release" day, so I'll send out the altered bell schedule later in the week. 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 continue our work on Boolean expressions and if statements. Here's what we're doing for this abbreviated week:

• Unit 3: Lesson 2 - Relational Operators

• Unit 3: Lesson 3 - Else

• Unit 3 Quiz 🐧

Please let me know if you have any questions, and I hope you enjoy your upcoming 3-day weekend!

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 wrap up our unit on using objects. Here's the plan for this week:

• Unit 2: Review

• Assignment 2: Control Tower

• Unit 2 Exam ⛵

• start Unit 3: Boolean Expressions and if Statements

• Unit 3: Lesson 1 - Simple Ifs

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. 

Boolean expressions are one of the fundamental concepts of all of computer science, so I think this next unit will be really interesting and 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 continue with our work on Unit 2: Using Objects – should be an easy week after Homecoming weekend. Here's the plan:

• Unit 2: Lesson 6 - Using Methods

• Unit 2: Lesson 7 - Wrapper Classes

• Unit 2: Lesson 8 - Math Functions

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 object-oriented programming:

• Unit 2: Lesson 4 - Classes and Objects

• Unit 2 Quiz 🍍 

• Unit 2: Lesson 5 - Using Constructors

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! This week, we're going to move on to Unit 2: Using Objects, which begins our journey into object-oriented programming (OOP). Here's the plan:

• Unit 1 Exam 🔥 

• start Unit 2: Using Objects

• Unit 2: Lesson 1 - Strings and Class Types

• Unit 2: Lesson 2 - Escape Sequences and String Concatenation

• start Unit 2: Lesson 3 - String Methods

Objects are a little weird at first, but if you think of them like a box that contains information that you can access and modify, they'll quickly make sense. 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:

• Unit 1: Lesson 5 - Modular Division (notes)

• Unit 1: Lesson 6 - Numeric Casts (notes)

• Assignment 1: Calculating Grades

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 you had with your schedule have all been worked out. Now that we've had a few days to get to know each other, we can get to work! Here's what we're doing in class this week:

• finish Unit 1: Lesson 1 - Output In Java (notes)

• Unit 1: Lesson 2 - User Input and Variables (notes)

• Unit 1: Lesson 3 - Data Types (notes)

• Unit 1 Quiz 🍄‍🟫

• Unit 1: Lesson 4 - Number Calculations (notes)

This unit is full of fundamental Java commands and programming skills that we'll use throughout the entire course, so make sure you complete all the Coding Activities, and let me know if you have any questions. 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. AP Computer Science A (AP CS A) focuses on computing skills related to programming in Java, an industry standard, high-level language. In this class, we will use the ProjectSTEM online curriculum, which aligns closely to the AP exam and has helped previous students be well prepared. It is my sincere belief that every student can learn computer science!

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

• Welcome to AP Computer Science! - first day presentation

• get logged in to ProjectSTEM

• start Unit 1: Primitive Types

• Unit 1: Lesson 1 - Output In Java (notes)

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!