🧑🏾‍🤝‍🧑🏾 day-plan

🔖
  1. Energiser
  2. Morning orientation
  3. Workshop: Using the Curriculum
  4. Morning break
  5. Workshop: Using GitHub
  6. lunch
  7. Blockers! Getting Unstuck
  8. Afternoon break
  9. Study Group Development
  10. Code Review
  11. Wrap

✍🏽 Register

Energiser!

Learning Objectives

Energisers are a big part of CYF’s culture! Even as adults, we all feel a bit shy and uncertain when we join a new group. But when we let ourselves be silly together, we start to feel more at home.

Here follows one energiser for in-person and one for online.

🗂️ Options

Zip Zap Boing

Zip Zap Boing!

Learning Objectives

👉 Zip Zap Boing Gameplay

In a single group, have participants stand in a circle. This game works best with 5 or more players and must be played in person.

Make your zipzapper

Press your hands together in front of you, palms facing each other to make your energy zipzapper. Crackle! Feel the energy between your hands!

Point your zipzapper to the person next to you, and say “Zip”.

Point your zipzapper at anyone in the circle and say “Zap”.

Now, put both hands up in the air, jump, and say “Boing!” This reverses the direction of play.

Play the game

One person starts by saying “Zip” and pointing to another person in the circle. That person then has three options:

  1. Zip the person on your left or right.
  2. Zap anyone in the circle.
  3. Boing the energy back to them, which reverses the direction of play.

The game continues with players reacting quickly to keep the energy flowing.

If someone hesitates or makes a mistake, they’re out.

Evolve the game

Add variations to increase complexity and challenge
  • Round 2: Add a new word “Zop” which skips the next person in the circle
  • Round 3: Players must use a different gesture for each word (e.g., point for Zip, thumbs up for Zap, jazz hands for Boing)
  • Round 4: Increase the speed - anyone who takes more than 2 seconds to respond is out
Popcorn Show and Tell

Popcorn Show and Tell

Learning Objectives

A quick introduction to popcorning where participants spontaneously “pop up” to share.

Facilitator grab something close to you and show it to the group. What is interesting about this object? What does it mean to you?

  1. After sharing, say “popcorn to…” and choose someone else.
  2. That person shares their response, then popcorns to another participant.

Continue until everyone has shared once or you run out of time.

![!TIP] If everyone puts their hand up and then put it down after speaking, it’s easier to see who hasn’t shared yet.

🎡 Morning orientation

Learning Objectives

Planning during the week

🧭 During the week, create a post on Slack and get some people to take on the roles of facilitator and timekeeper. Nominate new people each time.

👣 Steps

If you haven’t done so already, choose someone (volunteer or trainee) to be the facilitator for this morning orientation block. Choose another to be the timekeeper.

🎙️ The Facilitator will:

  1. Assemble the entire group (all volunteers & all trainees) in a circle
  2. Briefly welcome everyone with an announcement, like this:

    💬 “Morning everyone, Welcome to CYF {REGION}, this week we are working on {MODULE} {SPRINT} and we’re currently working on {SUMMARISE THE TOPICS OF THE WEEK}”

  3. Ask any newcomers to introduce themselves to the group, and welcome them.
  4. Now check: is it the start of a new module? Is it sprint 1? If so, read out the success criteria for the new module.
  5. Next go through the morning day plan only (typically on the curriculum website) - and check the following things:

Facilitator Checklist

  • Check the number of volunteers you have for the morning
  • Check someone is leading each session
  • Describe how any new activities works for the group
  • Decide how best to allocate trainees and volunteers for a given block - most blocks will make this clear

⏰ The Timekeeper will:

  • Announce the start of an activity and how long it will take (check everyone is listening)
  • Manage any whole class timers that are used in an activity
  • Give people a 10-minute wrap-up warning before the end of an activity
  • Announce the end of an activity and what happens next

🗺️ Using the curriculum

Learning Objectives

At CYF, the curriculum maps out what you will learn together over the course. It defines your weekly work, the preparation you must do before class and what you will do together on class days. Use this time to go through the activities and learn how to navigate the curriculum interface.

Resources

The facilitator will make a copy of this template presentation 👉

Preparation

  • Facilitator: Review the How to use the curriculum presentation before class.
  • Facilitator: Ensure everyone can access the Miro board presentation.
  • Facilitator: Split the class into groups of no more than 4.
  • Facilitator: Make sure every group has access to a laptop.
  • Facilitator: Make sure every group has access to a piece of paper and pen

Introduction

The facilitator will use the Miro board presentation to guide trainees and volunteers through a discussion about how we use the curriculum.

Morning Break

A quick break of fifteen minutes so we can all concentrate on the next piece of work.

Workshop: Using GitHub 🔗

Learning Objectives

Seeing like a developer

The purpose of this readme is to explain the objectives and activities of the Developer Specs workshop.

Welcome, everyone. This workshop is your first set of technical “glasses”. You’re going to learn to see a website like a developer. This means you will use a system of inquiry to help you find information in complex interfaces.

Caution: Once you start seeing like a developer, you can’t unsee it! You might find it harder to view interfaces as a regular user would - which is ironically who we design them for.

https://github.com/CodeYourFuture/Developer-Specs/

Requirements

This workshop is designed to be completed on GitHub. You will need to have a GitHub account and access to the internet. Other than that it’s for newbies!

There are three activities. Split into groups of no more than 5 and set a timer so you don’t lose track of time. Click the stopwatch times to start a countdown.

📝 Note

Exercise 1: Eat Me, Drink Me 📚

The first thing you should always do is find and read the README

  • Find the README file in this repository
  • What’s its purpose? How can you tell?

Key takeaway: don’t skip over text. Read it.

📝 Note

Exercise 2: You’ve Got Issues 🔍

All your coursework is assigned as issues, so you definitely need to understand them. Go to https://github.com/CodeYourFuture/Developer-Specs/ and let’s play detective:

  • Can you find where issues are listed?
  • Look at the labels - what story do they tell about how work is organized? Hover over them - what else can you find out?
  • Create an issue yourself. What options do you discover?
  • Challenge: Can you find out who decides what labels mean?

Popcorn round your group and share one key takeaway

📝 Note

Exercise 3: Pull the Other One 🕵️

Time to explore how code changes are tracked and discussed. You’re going to need to slow way way down here. Instead of jumping around, skipping over all the details, you’re going to read this page view from top to bottom. Really look at it. Ask each other: what does this button mean? Where does this link go?

  • Find a pull request (PR) and “step through” the interface reading it line by line.
  • What’s the story being told in the PR?
  • Can you piece together what changed and why?
  • Where can you find the file changes in this PR?
  • How can you filter the changes in the file view?
  • Where is the conversation happening?
  • Where can you see all the pull requests on this repo?

Write your key takeaway down in your notebook.

Solo Challenge: Hidden Powers 🔮

Take 5 minutes to click around and try things:

  • What happens when you press ‘/’ or ’t’?
  • Can you find other keyboard shortcuts?
  • What search tools can you discover?
  • How could you find a word on this page instantly?

Share your most surprising discovery with the group as you wrap up

Remember: There’s no “correct” path through this workshop. The goal is to develop your own way of exploring and understanding interfaces.

Acceptance Criteria

  • I can find the issues view, the pull request view, and the file tree view on any GitHub repo
  • I know how to create an issue and attach labels
  • I have a strategy for finding things in the GitHub interface
  • I can bring up the search and the command palette

Community Lunch

Every Saturday we cook and eat together. We share our food and our stories. We learn about each other and the world. We build community.

This is everyone’s responsibility, so help with what is needed to make this happen, for example, organising the food, setting up the table, washing up, tidying up, etc. You can do something different every week. You don’t need to be constantly responsible for the same task.

Sharing Our Blockers

Learning Objectives

We call problems that stop our progress “blockers”. We talk through our blockers regularly and help each other get “unblocked” or “unstuck”.

Sharing Our Blockers

Join the online board or grab some sticky notes. Add your blockers.

Make sure to add only one blocker per note.

Facilitator Once everyone has added their blockers, group similar blockers together.

Facilitator Next, discuss the blockers and help each other get “unblocked”. Start with the most common blocker and work your way down the list.

Hints and Tips

Example Blockers

  • I can’t find a Slack channel people keep mentioning.
  • People tell me I should be replying to a Slack message in a thread, and I don’t know how.
  • I can’t open a PR, because…
  • How do I fix extra stray files in my PR?
  • I don’t have a computer so I can’t complete my work!
  • How do I run Lighthouse?
  • Everyone should have blockers. If you aren’t blocked on anything in the course, do you need to challenge yourself more?
  • Ask “stupid” questions. Your question is not stupid! What we are doing is hard, and everyone has questions. If you’re stuck, it’s likely that someone else is too. Please help others and ask your question!
  • If you have other more advanced questions, do write them on the board but don’t expect to answer them in Blockers. We will work on those in study group.

Afternoon Break

Please feel comfortable and welcome to pray at this time if this is part of your religion.

If you are breastfeeding and would like a private space, please let us know.

Study Group Development

Learning Objectives

This time is set aside for you to work together in small groups to make progress on your coursework and objectives. You should have brought at least one ticket from your backlog to work on and ideally have prepared at least one question to get mentor support on.

You can also choose to do structured activities to consolidate your objectives for this sprint. Your learning journey belongs to you. Think about what you need to do to achieve the objectives for this sprint and how you can use this time to work towards them.

If you are working on a Pull Request, this is a great time to get real time code review from your peers and mentors. Remember to use the GitHub interface to comment on the code and ask questions so your work can be tracked.

🗂️ Options

Optional structured activity: Pomodoro

Pomodoro

Learning Objectives

Each group member, take a small-scoped piece of work from your backlog. Set a timer for . Use this focused time to complete your ticket and open a PR.

⌛ Time’s up! Take a break! Make a cup of tea. Walk around a bit.

Now set a new and review each PR as a group.

⌛ Time’s up! Take a break! Make a cup of tea. Stretch! Look at how much progress you made in one hour. ✨

Optional structured activity: Pair Programming

Pair programming

Learning Objectives

  • Switch between driver and navigator roles after
  • The “driver” is the person typing on the keyboard, just thinking about what needs to be written
  • The “navigator” reviews what the driver is doing and is thinking about to write next
  • Don’t dominate - this is teamwork

⌛ Time’s up! Take a break! Make a cup of tea. Good job, partners!

Bikes for Refugees Project

Bikes for Refugees Project 🔗

https://github.com/CodeYourFuture/bikes-for-refugees

Why are we doing this?

This is an optional or “Stretch” goal. You don’t have to complete it. If it looks interesting to you, you could bring this to class and work through it in groups in the afternoon.

Maximum time in hours

1

How to submit

  1. Fork to your GitHub account.
  2. Make regular small commits with clear messages.
  3. When you are ready, open a PR to the CYF repo, following the instructions in the PR template.

How to review

  1. Complete your PR template
  2. Ask for review from a classmate or mentor
  3. Make changes based on their feedback
  4. Review and refactor again next week

Anything else?

Why do semantics matter?

  • :brain: Prep work
  • 🎯 Topic Requirements
  • 🎯 Topic Structuring Data
  • 🎯 Topic Teamwork
  • 🏝️ Priority Stretch
  • 🐇 Size Small
  • 📅 Sprint 1
  • 📍 HTML & CSS

🛎️ Code waiting for review 🔗

Below are trainee coursework Pull Requests that need to be reviewed by volunteers.

ITP-JAN-25 | SALLY McGRATH | ONBOARDING | Sprint 1 🔗

Learners, PR Template

Self checklist

  • I have committed my files one by one, on purpose, and for a reason
  • I have titled my PR with COHORT_NAME | FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME | REPO_NAME | WEEK
  • I have tested my changes
  • My changes follow the style guide
  • My changes meet the requirements of this task

Changelist

I am opening this PR to preview my website as I do not have local file access.

I will mark this PR as Needs Review when it’s ready for review.

Questions

Ask any questions you have for your reviewer.

Start a review
See more pull requests

Wrap

You are done for the day. Take a moment to reflect on what you have learned and achieved.

Stand in a circle and share:

  • 📛 your name
  • 💪🏽 one thing you achieved today
  • 👷🏾 the task you are going to work on next
  • 🛟 one thing you need help with

Give yourselves a round of applause. Now you have earned your rest. Usually people go for a cup of tea or a pint after class. You are welcome to join and wind down together.