Self-coordinating as a community poses challenges. One challenge is working out not just what to do but when to do it. This gets harder when we are working on different schedules. To make things even harder, we use a flipped classroom model: very different from a regular school.

To solve this problem, we use the rhythm of the week.

This rhythm supports trainees to plan their work during the week while still allowing flexibility in people’s different schedules. In a typical sprint week, Tuesday is the starting point with in-person sessions on Saturdays serving as the mid-point in the week. We use Sundays and Mondays to reflect on our learning and finish off any backlog tasks.

• Come on time when you’re learning.

  • Many people give up their free time to teach us. They could be doing other things. We should respect this and always be on time.

• Clean up after ourselves.

  • Kind people let us use their space. We should keep it tidy and clean, just like our own homes.

• Talk to each other (in English).

  • Put Slack on your phone and computer. Use it to ask for help and talk about classes.
  • Speaking English helps everyone get better at it. Even if you know someone’s language, try to use English.

• Learn to find answers yourself.

  • We teach you how to look things up. Try to use Google to answer your own questions.

• Use the computer yourself.

  • Don’t let volunteers or peers type for you. Ask for help, but do the work on your own.

• Help each other out.

  • You’re all learning together. You can understand each other’s problems. Ask for help and offer it too. Explaining things to others helps you learn more.

• We’re all part of this.

  • This isn’t just a coding school. It’s for all of us - participants, trainees, volunteers. Try to make it better in any way you can.

We use the morning orientation block to gather the community together. We nominate a time-keeper and a facilitator (if they weren’t already nominated during the week). The objectives of the morning orientation block are clear:

Steps 👣

1. Search for morning orientation on the curriculum website
2. Find a day plan view where the morning orientation is used
3. Check the learning objectives on the morning orientation block

In a flipped classroom, we spend our time in class focused on active learning: we need to prioritise time and space for trainees to work on their backlog independently in small groups.

Steps 👣

1. Search for study group on the curriculum website
2. Find a day plan that uses the study group block
3. Read the instructions on the block
4. Check the learning objectives for the study group block

In software development, we break down complex projects into smaller, manageable parts, which we work on for a week or two. These periods are called “sprints.”

A sprint backlog is like a to-do list. It lists what the team has decided to work on this sprint. It’s chosen from a larger list, usually called the “product backlog,” which holds the entire project to-do list.

The backlog is a set of work designed to build understanding beyond the concepts introduced in the course prep. For your course, we have prepared a backlog of mandatory work for each sprint. You will copy these tasks into your own backlog. You can also add any other tickets you want to work on to your backlog, and schedule all of the tasks according to your own goals and capacity. Use your planning board to do this.

You will find the backlog in the Backlog view on every sprint.

Copy the tickets you are working on to your own backlog. Organise your tickets on your board and move them to the right column as you work through them. Here’s a flowchart showing the stages a ticket goes through: