Every CYF session begins with an energiser. Usually there’s a rota showing who will lead the energiser. We have some CYF 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
Popcorn show and tell: popcorn around the room and show one nearby object or something in your pocket or bag and explain what it means to you.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this session trainees will be able to use critical thinking.

Preparation

Form groups of 4
1 Laptop with internet access per group
Pen and paper or a virtual board

Introduction

Sometimes the things we accept as common knowledge are not rooted in facts. Critical thinking involves separating our gut feelings from those based on evidence.

“Everyone says so, so it must be true” Quiz

🎯 Goal: Use your critical thinking to answer the maximum number of questions on the quiz. (10 minutes)

In your groups, start with a quiz called “Everyone says so, so it must be true” here.

Go to the link and answer as many questions as you can in 10 min.
The group should agree on what is the right answer, without long discussions.
The goal is to answer as many questions as possible in this short time.

Developing the ultimate chocolate bar

🎯 Goal: To use critical thinking skills (25 minutes)

For the next exercise, you will use critical thinking skills to develop the ultimate chocolate bar. The goal of the activity is to create the most appealing/attractive chocolate bar for your customer.

Instructions

Stay in the same groups of 4
One person is the creator of the chocolate bar and the rest of the group are the customers/users
There are 4 steps to the exercise.

Step 1

Set a timer for 3 minutes.
The creator thinks of an example of the most appealing chocolate bar and writes all the aspects of their chocolate bar down.

Step 2

The creator has 1 minute to present the chocolate bar to the customers/users.
The customers can give feedback or comment on the chocolate bar, maximum 5 minutes

Step 3

Based on the feedback/comments to the creator will redesign their chocolate bar for another 3 minutes.

Repeat step 2

Reflect on the exercise

🎯 Goal: Reflect on the learning of today’s session (25 minutes)

Organise the cohort in a big circle for the reflection.

Creator to share

How did you decide how to design your chocolate bar in each phase? How did you measure the value of the chocolate bar to the customer each time to make improvements?
Every creator can share, but if everyone already said your ideas, you are welcome to pass to avoid repetitive discussion

Customers to share

What influenced your recommendations? What were the aspects of the chocolate bar you valued in this product?
Ask 1 customer of each group to share. Again, if all reflection has been said, it’s fine to just say “same as what was mentioned by X person”

Conclusions

When developing a product for a customer/user, we cannot merely rely on our gut feelings or preferences. Using critical thinking, we employ different types of research in our development. Critical thinking requires you to think beyond your opinions/facts that you know and your own experiences. It involves good decision-making and using other sources to form a sound judgement.

Good versus Poor decision making

Poor Decisions are subjective: heavily rely on Feelings, Common sense, Gut Instinct, and Guessing.
Good decisions are objective: Rely on facts, Evidence, Reasoning, and Informed opinion.

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

JS1 week 1 evaluation

🎓 Instructions

This workshop aims to check your understanding.

Each task will explain whether or not you should run the code.

For each task, you can use JS1 week 1 prep to help you with the questions.
You can also use documentation to look up any functions that are unfamiliar.
Don’t use ChatGPT or any other AI tool to help you.

🧰 Setup

👉 This workshop lives on CYF-Workshops on GitHub

Get into pairs or groups of up to three.
Make sure you have a clone of the CYF-Workshops repository on your local machine

Each file contains a different problem at a particular level. Start this project at Level 100 and then move up through the levels: level 200, 300 …

🏁 Go to Level 100

Every Saturday at CYF 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.

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

🛎️ Code waiting for review 🔗

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

NW-6 | Zeliha Pala | JS1| [TECH ED] Complete week 2 exercises | WEEK-2 🔗

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

Briefly explain your PR.

Questions

Ask any questions you have for your reviewer.

Start a review

NW6 | Rabia Avci | JS1 Module | [TECH ED] Complete week 3 exercises | Week 3 🔗

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

Done debugging for time format which helped with refactoring as well.
Get used to writing assertions for checking conditions.
Done if, else if conditional statements.
A basic array solution is used to find vowels. Not deep knowledge about array, just as beginning.

Questions

No question.

Start a review

NW6 | Nazanin-Saedi | Week-3-JS1 | week3 🔗

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

Briefly explain your PR.

Questions

Ask any questions you have for your reviewer.

Start a review

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

Some parts were complicated. Blackjack cards took new horses to understand and write the code. Over all day by day, I am getting better.

Questions

I would be very happy to get feedback.

Start a review

NW6 | Haythem Mohammed | Module-JS1 | WEEK3 🔗

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

Briefly explain your PR.

Questions

Ask any questions you have for your reviewer.

Start a review

See more pull requests

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.

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

🛎️ Code waiting for review 🔗

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

NW-6 | Zeliha Pala | JS1| [TECH ED] Complete week 2 exercises | WEEK-2 🔗

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

Briefly explain your PR.

Questions

Ask any questions you have for your reviewer.

Start a review

NW6 | Rabia Avci | JS1 Module | [TECH ED] Complete week 3 exercises | Week 3 🔗

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

Done debugging for time format which helped with refactoring as well.
Get used to writing assertions for checking conditions.
Done if, else if conditional statements.
A basic array solution is used to find vowels. Not deep knowledge about array, just as beginning.

Questions

No question.

Start a review

NW6 | Nazanin-Saedi | Week-3-JS1 | week3 🔗

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

Briefly explain your PR.

Questions

Ask any questions you have for your reviewer.

Start a review

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

Some parts were complicated. Blackjack cards took new horses to understand and write the code. Over all day by day, I am getting better.

Questions

I would be very happy to get feedback.

Start a review

NW6 | Haythem Mohammed | Module-JS1 | WEEK3 🔗

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

Briefly explain your PR.

Questions

Ask any questions you have for your reviewer.

Start a review

See more pull requests

Retro (20 minutes)

A retro is a chance to reflect on this past sprint. You can do this on a Jamboard (make sure someone clicks “Make a copy” before you start, and you work on that together) or on sticky notes on a wall.

Set a timer for 5 minutes.
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.