What Kansas Teachers Teach While Kansas Assessment Program Runs

Quick answer: While the Kansas Assessment Program runs, computer science teachers usually lose the room before they lose the time. KAP takes the labs and the carts your course depends on for weeks, so the answer is to bank two or three weeks of unplugged work in advance and keep the graded evidence tied to the Kansas College and Career Ready Standards.

Why does the KAP window hit computer science hardest?

Nobody schedules around the computer science teacher. KAP runs in grades three through eight and grade ten for reading and math, with science at grades five, eight and eleven, and every one of those sessions needs the same devices your course runs on. The cart disappears into a testing room, the lab becomes a proctored space, and a coding unit that assumed daily screen time stops working overnight.

Building schedules make this worse in small Kansas districts, where one lab serves the whole K-12 campus. Your sections keep meeting, attendance is still taken, and the Kansas State Department of Education has no interest in what happened to your sequence. Planning for that fortnight in January rather than discovering it in April is the single biggest difference between a wrecked semester and an inconvenient one.

What can I actually teach for three weeks with no devices?

Unplugged computer science is not a consolation prize. Sorting algorithms run fine as students physically reordering themselves in a hallway, binary and character encoding work on graph paper, and a threat model for a school network can be drawn on a whiteboard and argued about for a full period. Students who struggle at a keyboard often do their clearest thinking in these weeks.

Elementary colleagues sharing that same lab need something self-contained too, especially when a class is parked with them mid-session. All Saints’ Day Craft – SEL and Art Worksheet for Elementary Grades is a single-sitting printable craft for the younger grades that asks nothing at all of the school network, which makes it useful cover on the days you are supervising somebody else's class rather than teaching your own sequence.

How do I turn unplugged weeks into graded evidence?

Grade the argument, not the artifact. Give students a scenario, ask for a written decision with reasons, and score the reasoning against three criteria you keep all year. Kansas College and Career Ready Standards expect students to build an argument from evidence in every subject, so the writing you collect in a device-free fortnight is defensible in a gradebook and quick to mark.

Ethics and expression give you the richest scenarios, because students already have opinions and have to defend them. Ai Weiwei – Art and Political Activism builds a discussion and writing sequence around censorship, audience and the ways an artist's message travels, which transfers directly to conversations about platforms and moderation. Further units built in that same shape are indexed on Kansas Teaching Resources & Worksheets (Grades K–12) by grade band and subject.

What goes back on the calendar once testing ends?

May in a Kansas school is oddly free, and worth claiming early. Accreditation under the Kansans Can framework and KESA rests on outcomes that are not KAP scores at all, which gives your department a real argument for spending those post-testing weeks on substantial project work rather than on review packets nobody asked for and nobody reads.

That is the moment for the units you never have room for in November. AI Literacy & Cybersecurity Activities | Artificial Intelligence, Prompt Engineering & Online Safety | Computer Science Bundle | Grades 7–10 covers artificial intelligence, prompt work, cybersecurity and online safety as one sequence for grades seven through ten, so a six-week project block arrives already planned and paced. Teachers in surrounding states run into the same calendar, and Great Plains Teaching Resources (IA, KS, NE, ND, SD) collects that regional material.

Frequently asked questions

Are these resources connected to KSDE or the Kansas Assessment Program?

No. These are independent classroom materials, not affiliated with or endorsed by the Kansas State Department of Education, any assessment program or any other education agency. They are written to be used alongside the Kansas College and Career Ready Standards as your district interprets them, and you decide where they fit.

Do the unplugged activities need any software?

The printable components need paper and nothing else, which is the point during a testing window. Slides are included in some products for use on a projector when one is available, but the student-facing work in those units can be run entirely offline if your devices have been claimed.

How do the files arrive?

You get a digital file straight after checkout, containing printable worksheets, teacher notes and full answer keys, plus slide decks on the products that list them. Print what you need for a class set, or load the files into whatever platform your district uses. Refund and access terms are set out in the store's refund policy.

Related reading

• Kansas Computer Science: Planning a Unit to the Standards
• Kansas: Teaching Computer Science with Multilingual Learners
• Kansas Teaching Resources & Worksheets (Grades K–12)