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🎡 Morning orientation
Learning Objectives
Planning during the week
👣 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:
- Assemble the entire group (all volunteers & all trainees) in a circle
- 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}”
- Ask any newcomers to introduce themselves to the group, and welcome them.
- 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.
- 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
🔗 Technical interview workshop
Learning Objectives
Technical interviews
You will be applying for jobs, many of which require doing a technical interview.
You should already have read about technical interviews. In this workshop, you’ll be practising interviewing and being interviewed about technical content.
Below is a list of interview questions. You should have decided with your partner which question you are asking before coming to class, and should have prepared for it. Do not look at, or prepare for, any of the other questions.
Interview questions
Preparing to interview someone
Think about your goals as an interviewer. You want to:
- See the best someone can do - you’re not trying to trick them.
- Work out how they approach problems:
- Do they make a plan?
- Do they think about edge cases?
- How do they handle not knowing how to do something?
- How easy are they to help?
- Can they solve the problem?
- Can they reason about their code?
- Do they run through their code with examples to test it?
To do this you will need to:
- Already know a good solution to the problem (ideally multiple solutions!)
- Prepare how you’re going to explain the problem
- Listen to the candidate as they’re being interviewed
- Work out when they’re stuck (but give them enough time to come up with an answer before intervening)
- If they’re not telling you what they’re thinking, encourage them to talk aloud
- Give nudges (ideally by asking questions), not answers, to help them get unstuck
- Understand their code, and be able to work out whether it works
- Identify edge cases their code does not work for
Giving feedback
After you interview someone, you will give them feedback. Think about what feedback you would appreciate. Some examples of topics:
- How clearly did they communicate their ideas?
- Did you always know what they were thinking/doing?
- How easy was their code to read and understand?
- How open were they to help?
- Did they come across as a person you’d want to work with?
- How well do you think they solved the problem? (Note: This doesn’t mean “did they solve it the same way you would”, though that can be an interesting comparison).
Doing the interview (30 minutes per interview)
In pairs, take turns interviewing your partner. In each interview, one of you will be the interviewer and the other the candidate.
You should:
- Candidate: Open VS Code on your laptop.
- Interviewer: Spend 2 minutes introducing the problem. It’s ok to leave some details out (hopefully the candidate will ask about them), but the question should make sense.
- Candidate: Spend 20 minutes solving the problem. This should be an interactive dialogue, where the interviewer and candidate are talking throughout.
- Spend 8 minutes giving feedback and discussing the interview and experience.
Then swap.
Discussion (30 minutes)
As a whole class, discuss your experience. What went well? What did/didn’t you understand? What things felt uncomfortable? What could you have done differently? Try not to focus on the technical specifics of the interview question you did - try to focus on general things that will help you in your next interview.
🫖 Morning Break
A quick break of fifteen minutes so we can all concentrate on the next piece of work.
🛗 Study Group
Learning Objectives
What are we doing now?
You’re going to use this time to work through coursework. Your cohort will collectively self-organise to work through the coursework together in your own way. Sort yourselves into groups that work for you.
Use this time wisely
You will have study time in almost every class day. Don’t waste it. Use it to:
- work through the coursework
- ask questions and get unblocked
- give and receive code review
- work on your portfolio
- develop your own projects
🎲 Games, rules, logic, and strategy
We have some favourite games you can play if you are stuck.
- Traffic Jam: re-order the cars to unblock yourself
- Telephone: draw the words and write the pictures
- Set: a game of visual perception
- Mastermind: a game of deduction
- Sudoku: a game of logic
- Mancala: a game of strategy
🍽️ 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.
🎤 Demo
At CYF we expect you to demo your work to the class. You must have many opportunities to practice how to clearly and simply explain your work to others. This is really important both for interviews and for getting promoted later on.
⏰ Timekeeper
The timekeeper will keep the groups on track.
Split randomly into groups of no more than 5 people. Each person will have 2 minutes to demo their work to the group. After the demo, the group will give feedback for 5 minutes. Then the next person will demo their work.
🧑🏼🎓 Trainees
1. Demo
You will demo your work to the group. You will have 2 minutes to explain what you did and why. It’s ok to show broken code or code that doesn’t work yet. Just make sure your demo is interesting.
2. Feedback
After the demo, the group will give you feedback for up to 5 minutes. It’s smart to suggest what kind of feedback you want by asking some “generative” questions. For example:
- I wasn’t sure if it makes sense to try X. What do you think?
- I liked the way I did X, but I know there are other approaches, what did you do?
- I found X really confusing, did anyone else have the same problem?
- I wasn’t sure if I explained what an X was very clearly, how could I have explained it better?
💡 Tips:
- Practice your demo before class.
- Keep it simple. Don’t try to show everything you did. Just show one interesting thing.
- Keep it short. Two minutes is enough.
- Explain what you did and why.
- Show your code.
- Ask for feedback.
🛗 Study Group
Learning Objectives
What are we doing now?
You’re going to use this time to work through coursework. Your cohort will collectively self-organise to work through the coursework together in your own way. Sort yourselves into groups that work for you.
Use this time wisely
You will have study time in almost every class day. Don’t waste it. Use it to:
- work through the coursework
- ask questions and get unblocked
- give and receive code review
- work on your portfolio
- develop your own projects
🛎️ 0 PRs available. Open some pull requests! 🔗
🫖 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
Learning Objectives
What are we doing now?
You’re going to use this time to work through coursework. Your cohort will collectively self-organise to work through the coursework together in your own way. Sort yourselves into groups that work for you.
Use this time wisely
You will have study time in almost every class day. Don’t waste it. Use it to:
- work through the coursework
- ask questions and get unblocked
- give and receive code review
- work on your portfolio
- develop your own projects
🔄 Retro: Start / Stop / Continue
🕹️Retro (20 minutes)
A retro is a chance to reflect. You can do this on RetroTool (create a free anonymous retro and share the link with the class) or on sticky notes on a wall.
- Set a timer for 5 minutes. There’s one on the RetroTool too.
- Write down as many things as you can think of that you’d like to start, stop, and continue doing next sprint.
- Write one point per note and keep it short.
- When the timer goes off, one person should set a timer for 1 minute and group the notes into themes.
- Next, set a timer for 2 minutes and all vote on the most important themes by adding a dot or a +1 to the note.
- Finally, set a timer for 8 minutes and all discuss the top three themes.