What’s Still In Progress

This pathway is a work in progress, and this page says so out loud instead of pretending otherwise. It’s a running list of what’s missing or still rough, kept here so it’s visible rather than living only in one teacher’s head.

Last swept: 2026-08-03, after splitting the rhythm page into Daily Rhythm, Sprint Rhythm, and Sprint Calendar.

Blocking, dated

• Worked-example DDR for Card 0.2. The card says “read the worked example the teacher provides,” and none exists yet. Needed before Card 0.2 runs, around Aug 18.
• Verify the waterfall-vs-agile video. Waterfall and Agile links a teacher-recommended video that hasn’t had a final content check.
• Last year’s granular scoresheets. Card 0.4 (score autopsy) depends on having the real sheets in hand.
• Unit 2 reading packet. Needed by Sep 22 (Sprint 2 start). Units 3-5 packets can trail.
• Water access for the twelve Week 3 Tuesdays isn’t confirmed. The Sprint Calendar now lists a specific water day for every sprint, but those dates are targets, not a confirmed pool booking. The dry-integration fallback is written down; the actual reservation isn’t.
• Front matter packet (safety agreement, syllabus, Ten Bullets, procurement rule, card list) needs one print run before Sprint 1, then it lives on the wall until binders arrive in January.

Content debt in Units 1-5

Most of Units 2 through 5 are still short stubs compared to the full treatment Units 0 and 1 got: a core question, a resource, an activity, and a clearing mechanism, but without the longer before-class reading and prep prompt.

Every card on the site is drafted by Fable and marked Draft on the pathway index regardless of how complete it looks. None of them are “Ready” until a human has actually taught from one and signed off on it.

• Unit 4 (Software) needs a substantial rewrite, not a polish pass. The teacher already teaches software in other ways, and Cards 4.1, 4.3, 4.4, and 4.5 as drafted don’t match that. Some of it still needs to be taught here; most of the unit will likely be rebuilt from scratch rather than edited in place.
• Card 4.2 (The Python Ladder) was removed as a redundant summary of the real Python Ladder page, which is hidden from the pathway nav but still linked from How the Studio Works. Worth deciding whether that page should be un-hidden now that Unit 4’s card list no longer has an entry pointing to it.
• Decide whether every card needs the longer format, or whether that’s deliberately front-loaded into Units 0 and 1 (the ones taught before anyone has touched a robot).
• Some cards’ internal “Unit:” labels don’t match their actual unit. Cosmetic for now; worth fixing in the same pass as any layout change that starts displaying the unit name.
• Heading style drifts a little card to card (“Why This Matters” vs “Why This Matters for Competition,” a few different resource-section subtitles). Cheap to fix, low priority.
• Verification prompt bank needs expansion. The 90-second oral checks draw on a bank of questions per card; only a subset of cards have one built out so far.
• Existing cards only describe teacher verification. Sprint Rhythm now splits clearing into peer-verified and teacher-verified, per card. No published card (e.g. Card 0.6) says which kind it is yet, and all of them still read as teacher-only (“Mr. B watched…”).

Missing systems

• Design spec template. Needed by spring sprint planning. Card 5.9 already promises this exists; it doesn’t yet.
• CA CTE standards alignment table.
• A way to track which cards and DDRs each student has cleared digitally. The paper mechanism is now fully specified: About Your Lesson Card Signoff Sheet, forty rows in the student’s folder, peer- or teacher-verified. Nothing digital exists yet, and it has to cost minutes a day, not minutes a student, or it won’t survive the semester.
• The “box of dead things.” Card 2.7 (Connection Autopsy) needs a collection of failed connectors and splices in hand. Start collecting now.

Site mechanics

• Safety callouts. Code and content touching thrusters, power, or water is supposed to get a highlighted safety callout. None exist yet, and a few cards (power and fuse sizing, wire prep and waterproofing, penetrators and enclosure sealing, ESCs and brushless motors) are exactly the content this is for.
• Print page breaks. The print edition starts a fresh page for each unit, but cards within the same unit can still run together mid-page.
• Optional: show the unit name on each card, not just a lesson number.
• Student-facing card list needs prerequisites visible and bench-versus-table marked. Students choose their own cards now instead of being assigned them, so this has to be schedulable at a glance, not discovered mid-sprint.

Housekeeping

• A full teacher read-through of the new DDR card and Waterfall and Agile page before they’re used in class.
• Daily Rhythm ends with “TBD - it might be 3 or 4” under The Two Habits. Draft placeholder left in on a live student page; resolve before Sprint 1.
• The Class and the Team lists the Robotics Team’s meeting time as “TBD” in the comparison table. Needs a real time before this page goes in front of families.