AP Computer Science A

Welcome to Berkeley High’s AP Computer Science A class.

This website is your main jumping off point for material related to this class. We will usually also link to whatever we are working on in a given day from Google Classroom but this site will grow over the course of the year with new material so you should be familiar with what is here.

Table of contents

Setup

The first thing you need to do is get set up with GitHub. To do that, go to the BHS CS site and follow the instructions there about creating a GitHub account and then getting set up on that website. We’ll be going over this in class in our first few days.

Slides

Slides I’ve presented in class.

• Objects (2023-09-19)
• Strings (2023-10-02)
• Booleans (2023-10-03)
• Catch up, Q1 (2023-10-06)
• Twenty questions (2023-10-06)
• Codespaces PR (2023-10-10)
• Conditional statements (2023-10-13)
• Boolean problem (2023-10-16)
• Braces (2023-10-23)
• Loops (2023-10-23)
• Boolean birds (2023-10-26)
• Unit 3 FRQs (2023-10-30)
• For loop patterns (2023-11-01)
• Primes (2023-11-03)
• Arrays (2023-11-07)
• Idioms (2023-11-14)
• Classes (2023-11-27)
• Numbers add (2023-12-06)
• Semester 1 review (2024-01-08)
• First GUI (2024-01-09)
• Array lists (2024-01-16)
• Math is hard (2024-01-17)
• Substring (2024-01-23)
• 2d arrays (2024-01-30)
• Grid game setup (2024-01-30)
• Grid game (2024-01-30)
• Primes and sorted (2024-01-30)
• Planning (2024-02-05)
• Algorithms (2024-02-12)
• Types quiz (2024-02-20)
• Binary search (2024-02-21)
• Sorting (2024-02-23)
• Inheritance (2024-02-26)
• Inherited methods (2024-02-26)
• Recursion (2024-03-18)
• Inheritance review (2024-03-27)
• Inheritance and constructors (2024-04-19)

Assignments

• Hello (2023-08-18)
• Geometry (2023-09-05)
• MadLibs (2023-09-11)
• Simple graphics (2023-09-11)
• Squares (2023-09-25)
• Boolean birds (2023-10-25)
• Primes (2023-10-31)
• Count vowels (2023-11-01)
• Sieve (2023-11-13)
• Point (2023-11-27)
• Numbers (2023-12-04)
• Finals graphics (2023-12-20)
• Welcome back (2024-01-08)
• Crossword (2024-01-16)
• Primes 2 (2024-01-25)
• Is Sorted (2024-01-26)
• Counting (2024-02-12)
• Totalling (2024-02-13)
• String search (2024-02-14)
• Game Algorithms (2024-02-15)
• Binary Search (2024-02-22)
• Area (2024-02-29)
• Leap year (2024-02-29)
• List recursion (2024-03-20)
• Roman numerals (2024-03-20)
• String Recursion (2024-03-20)
• Quicksort (2024-03-25)
• Tree Size (2024-04-08)
• FRQ 2023 Q1 (2024-04-11)
• FRQ 2023 Q2 (2024-04-12)
• FRQ 2023 Q3 (2024-04-15)
• FRQ 2019 Q1 (2024-04-16)
• FRQ 2019 Q2 (2024-04-16)
• FRQ 2019 Q3 (2024-04-16)
• FRQ 2019 Q4 (2024-04-16)
• FRQ 2021 Q1 (2024-04-16)
• FRQ 2021 Q2 (2024-04-16)
• FRQ 2021 Q3 (2024-04-16)
• FRQ 2021 Q4 (2024-04-16)
• FRQ 2022 Q1 (2024-04-16)
• FRQ 2022 Q2 (2024-04-16)
• FRQ 2022 Q3 (2024-04-16)
• FRQ 2022 Q4 (2024-04-16)
• FRQ 2023 Q4 (2024-04-16)

Assessments

• Unit 1 control constructs and arrays (2022-10-21)
• CSA Unit 01 (2023-09-01)
• Unit √2: methods (2023-09-18)
• Unit √2: estimate π (2023-09-18)
• Unit 2: strings (2023-10-04)
• Units 3 & 4: booleans and control constructs (2023-11-06)
• Flag (2023-11-30)
• Arrays, strings, and control constructs (2023-12-08)
• Test question (2023-12-15)
• Arrays fall final (2023-12-20)
• Control constructs fall final (2023-12-20)
• Classes fall final (2023-12-20)
• Numeric fall final (2023-12-20)
• Strings fall final (2023-12-20)
• Numeric review 3 (2024-01-22)
• Sort quiz (2024-02-20)
• Just Strings (2024-02-21)
• Just Strings 2 (2024-03-05)
• Word Search (2024-03-05)
• Word Search 2 (2024-03-07)
• Word Search 3 (2024-03-07)
• Word Search 4 (2024-03-07)
• Strings 3 (2024-03-14)
• Inheritance (2024-03-29)
• Exam review (2024-04-09)

Textbook

Our textbook is the online book BHS Awesome which is our own version of CSAwesome, a textbook used by thousands of AP CSA classes around the country. So far we’ve added one unit to BHS Awesome that is not in CSAwesome in between the originial Units 1 and 2. We may make some more changes over the course of the year to better adapt it to the order we’re covering the material but that will only matter to you if you’re reading ahead.

BHS Awesome is hosted on Runestone. Go ahead and make an account. Your teacher will give you the name of the course you should sign up for. And when Runestone asks you to donate money, you can decline.

Coding environment

BHS Awesome includes online coding exercises as which we will use but we also will do some work in a coding environment built into this website. Once you are set up with Github you can play with two demos here and here.

Later in the semester we will use GitHub Codespaces for more complex projects.

Class calendar

For an overview of what we’ll be covering this year take a look at our class calendar. This is a rough guide; we will make adjustments throughout the year as we see which topics need a bit more or less time.

Grading

I use standards based grading which is a grading system where your grade is based entirely on your mastery of a number of standards. I will be developing the specific standards for this class over the course of this year and will let you know when I add a new one.

Class policies

Nothing too onerous but please read my classroom policies.

Monday, June 10, 2024 at 8:21 PM Pacific / 0998641