This academic year, I coached two ACSL teams - my third grader's ACSL Elementary Division team and my sixth grader's ACSL Junior Division team. This is my second year teaching ACSL. Last year, I coached my daughter's ACSL Elementary Division team.
Previous Year's ACSL topics:
To understand and participate in the ACSL Junior Division, the student should have studied ACSL Elementary topics the previous year. If he/she has not studied, it would be best to spend a month or two getting familiar with ACSL Elementary topics. This is my previous blog post about coaching ACSL Elementary kids.
Programming Language:
It would also help to have a basic understanding about one of these languages - Python 3, C++ or Java. These are the languages of choice in ACSL Junior.
Schedule
There are four topics in ACSL Junior Division. Each topic is about 4-5 weeks long.
At the end of each topic, there is a 30-minute Short Problem exam, where the student gets to answer 5 questions.
There is also a 72-hour long Programming Problem exam. Once started, the clock timer starts ticking.
After all the ACSL exams are completed, there is a final exam for high scorers. This final exam usually lasts the whole day and involves all the topics and two programs.
Topics
The four main topics are:
- Number Systems
- Prefix/Postfix Notation
- Boolean Algebra
- Graph Theory
Extra TOPICS
- What Does This Program Do? This is a new section that contains pseudocode. The student is asked to compute the output of this program or the value of variables upon execution.
- New topics related to electronics such as LSHIFT, RSHIFT, LCIRC, RCIRC
- Digital Electronics - this is a diagrammatical representation of Boolean Algebra equations.
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If you have any questions, please contact me at arulbOsutkNiqlzziyties@gNqmaizl.bkcom. You can also post questions in our Facebook group. Thank you.
