Scope & Sequence — 2026–27¶
Every Friday from August 14, 2026 through May 28, 2027, mapped.
There are 42 Friday slots in that window. Five are holidays and three are deliberate flex weeks, leaving 34 teaching sessions.
Verify against the school calendar
The holidays below are the standard ones. Confirm fall break, teacher in-service days, and the exact spring break week with the school office, then adjust. Lessons are modular — if a week disappears, drop a flex week rather than renumbering everything.
Why there are flex weeks¶
A once-weekly class has no slack. One snow day, one assembly, one field trip, and a rigid 34-week plan collapses. Three flex weeks are placed at natural unit seams so they can absorb disruption — or, if nothing goes wrong, become catch-up and free-build days, which students love and which cost you nothing.
Flex weeks are not filler. They are the reason the plan survives contact with a real school calendar.
Unit 1 — Think Like a Machine¶
Computational thinking and game building in MakeCode Arcade
| Wk | Date | Topic | Platform | Accounts? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fri Aug 14 | Launch Day — How does a machine know anything? | Quick Draw + MakeCode | ❌ None |
| 2 | Fri Aug 21 | Sequence & events — making things move | MakeCode Arcade | ❌ None |
| 3 | Fri Aug 28 | Loops — doing it again without repeating yourself | MakeCode Arcade | ❌ None |
| 4 | Fri Sep 4 | Variables — keeping score | MakeCode Arcade | ❌ None |
| 5 | Fri Sep 11 | Conditionals — teaching a program to decide | MakeCode Arcade | ❌ None |
| 6 | Fri Sep 18 | Sprites & collisions — when things touch | MakeCode Arcade | ❌ None |
| 7 | Fri Sep 25 | Build your own — design your game | MakeCode Arcade | ❌ None |
| 8 | Fri Oct 2 | Playtest & share — ship it to the class | MakeCode Arcade | ❌ None |
| — | Fri Oct 9 | 🔄 FLEX 1 — catch-up, free build, or fall break | — | — |
Unit 1 needs zero student accounts
This is deliberate. It buys you eight weeks to sort out parent consent and account creation for Unit 2, without a single lesson blocked on paperwork.
Unit 2 — AI Unmasked¶
What AI actually is, how it learns, and where it fails
| Wk | Date | Topic | Platform | Accounts? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | Fri Oct 16 | What is AI, really? | Unplugged + Quick Draw | ❌ None |
| 10 | Fri Oct 23 | Training data — teach a machine yourself | Teachable Machine | ❌ None |
| 11 | Fri Oct 30 | Bias — when the data is lopsided | Teachable Machine + unplugged | ❌ None |
| 12 | Fri Nov 6 | How language models actually work | Unplugged + demo | ❌ None |
| 13 | Fri Nov 13 | Prompt engineering — asking better questions | Teacher-led AI demo | ❌ None |
| 14 | Fri Nov 20 | Hallucinations — when AI is confidently wrong | Teacher-led demo | ❌ None |
| — | Fri Nov 27 | 🦃 Thanksgiving break — no class | — | — |
| 15 | Fri Dec 4 | Synthetic media — seeing isn't believing | Unplugged + demo | ❌ None |
| 16 | Fri Dec 11 | AI for Good — a design sprint | Paper + discussion | ❌ None |
| 17 | Fri Dec 18 | Hour of Code celebration | Student choice | ❌ None |
| — | Fri Dec 25 | 🎄 Christmas — no class | — | — |
| — | Fri Jan 1 | 🎉 New Year — no class | — | — |
Unit 3 — From Blocks to Text¶
Real Python, typed by hand — plus how to work with an AI assistant
| Wk | Date | Topic | Platform | Accounts? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 | Fri Jan 8 | Hello, Python — your first typed program | Python editor | ⚠️ Optional |
| 19 | Fri Jan 15 | Variables & input — programs that talk back | Python editor | ⚠️ Optional |
| 20 | Fri Jan 22 | Conditionals in text | Python editor | ⚠️ Optional |
| 21 | Fri Jan 29 | Loops in text | Python editor | ⚠️ Optional |
| 22 | Fri Feb 5 | Lists — holding many things at once | Python editor | ⚠️ Optional |
| 23 | Fri Feb 12 | Functions — naming your own instructions | Python editor | ⚠️ Optional |
| 24 | Fri Feb 19 | Debugging — reading an error message on purpose | Python editor | ⚠️ Optional |
| 25 | Fri Feb 26 | Coding with an AI assistant — and checking its work | Python + AI demo | ⚠️ Optional |
| 26 | Fri Mar 5 | Python mini-project | Python editor | ⚠️ Optional |
| — | Fri Mar 12 | 🔄 FLEX 2 — catch-up or finish mini-projects | — | — |
Unit 4 — Ship It¶
Build a real website and put it on the actual internet
| Wk | Date | Topic | Platform | Accounts? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 | Fri Mar 19 | Your first web page — HTML | Browser editor | ⚠️ Optional |
| — | Fri Mar 26 | ✝️ Good Friday — no class | — | — |
| — | Fri Apr 2 | 🌷 Spring break — no class | — | — |
| 28 | Fri Apr 9 | Styling with CSS — making it yours | Browser editor | ⚠️ Optional |
| 29 | Fri Apr 16 | Going live — deploy to Azure | Azure Static Web Apps | 👩🏫 Teacher |
| 30 | Fri Apr 23 | Capstone kickoff — pitch your project | Paper + planning | — |
| 31 | Fri Apr 30 | Capstone build 1 | Student choice | — |
| 32 | Fri May 7 | Capstone build 2 | Student choice | — |
| 33 | Fri May 14 | Polish & deploy | Azure | 👩🏫 Teacher |
| 34 | Fri May 21 | 🎉 Showcase Day | — | — |
| — | Fri May 28 | 🔄 FLEX 3 — showcase overflow / last day | — | — |
Showcase is Week 34 on May 21, not May 28
Deliberate. If the year loses a Friday to weather or a schedule change, showcase slides to May 28 and nothing else has to move. If it doesn't, May 28 becomes a relaxed last-day free build.
At a glance¶
| Unit 1 | Unit 2 | Unit 3 | Unit 4 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sessions | 8 | 9 | 9 | 8 |
| Dates | Aug 14 – Oct 2 | Oct 16 – Dec 18 | Jan 8 – Mar 5 | Mar 19 – May 21 |
| Mode | Build | Discuss & experiment | Build | Build & ship |
| Student accounts | None | None | Optional | Optional |
| Deliverable | A game | An "AI for Good" pitch | A Python program | A live website |
Deliberate rhythm: two build-heavy units bracket a discussion-heavy one. Unit 2 arrives right when the novelty of game-building starts to fade and the days get shorter — a change of mode, not a drop in energy.
If you fall behind¶
In priority order:
- Spend a flex week. That's what they're for.
- Cut Week 24 (Debugging) and fold error-reading into Weeks 21–23 as you go.
- Merge Weeks 15 and 16 into a single synthetic-media + ethics session.
- Shorten the capstone to two build weeks (31–32) instead of three.
Never cut: Week 1 (sets the year's tone), Week 10 (Teachable Machine is the anchor experience of Unit 2), Week 29 (the first live deploy — the payoff the whole year promises), or Week 34 (showcase).