Meet your College Board Endorsed Consultant for AP Computer Science A, Maria Litvin
Maria Litvin has taught computer science and mathematics at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, since 1987. She is an AP Computer Science exam reader and a College Board consultant since 1996, and provides AP training for high school computer science teachers.
Prior to joining Phillips Academy, Maria taught computer science at Boston University. Maria is a co-author (with Gary Litvin) of several popular textbooks, all published by Skylight Publishing, including “C++ for You++,” “Java Methods: Object-Oriented Programming and Data Structures,” “Be Prepared for the AP Computer Science Exam in Java,” and “Mathematics for the Digital Age and Programming in Python” (2008), now in its second edition (2010).
Since 2014, as a Code.org affiliate, Maria has trained more than two hundred New England elementary school teachers to introduce computer science to children in grades K-5.
She is the faculty advisor of the Coding Circle community service program at the neighboring Boys & Girls Club, which introduces coding to elementary school children.
APSI Session Description for AP Computer Science A:
This APSI accommodates participants with different levels of familiarity with Java and OOP. We will study the material of all 10 Units in the Course and Exam Description (CED), including arithmetic, decisions (if statements), iterations (loops), strings, classes and objects, constructors and methods, inheritance and polymorphism, 1D and 2D arrays and ArrayList, searching and sorting, and recursion.
I will help you connect with many AP CSA resources, including a pre-packaged curriculum and several online Java practice platforms. I will model the use of these resources, which will make your teaching more successful yet easier to conduct. You will program in Java every day during synchronous Zoom meetings, including in breakout rooms – to help make more of your voices heard, model small-group work, and allow more solutions to emerge. Asynchronous coding will allow you to practice what you learned and then share your solutions with fellow participants.
We will discuss Java IDEs, including Eclipse, and I will code in Eclipse and will assist you in learning it. We will also code in Repl.it, an online IDE. You may use any Java IDE of your choice. You will receive an eBook Java Methods: Object-Oriented Programming and Data Structures, 3rd AP Edition, by Maria Litvin and Gary Litvin, Skylight Publishing, and we will use this book in class.
We will practice with formative and summative assessments, using the College Board’s AP Classroom as main resource, and will use AP Classroom’ data analytics, that allows students to monitor their own learning and for teachers to monitor performance of their entire class and that of individual students. We will do a mock grading of at least two free-response questions from the past AP exams, and solve sample multiple-choice questions.
We will discuss the College Board’s exemplar labs, and do at least one of them. Important part of the course will be daily modeling and discussion of pedagogical practices in teaching a CS course, helpful to new and experienced teachers alike. Sharing teaching practices, including unplugged activities, is one of our goals. We will discuss ideas for increasing diversity of AP CSA population, to bring in more young women and other underrepresented groups to take the course.
2024 WaltonAPSI / Computer Science A / Maria Litvin
This session is also offered in WaltonAPSI Event 2 June 18-21, 2024.