Prep for the American Computer Science League (Junior Division Grades 7-9)

American Computer Science League (ACSL) organizes team computer programming and computer science contests for K-12 schools, organizations and local groups, led by an adult advisor. The 2023-2024 school year will be our 46th year of continuous operation! Last year, over 500 teams and more than 6000 students in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia participated. Out ACSL Elementary division team won one Gold medal, one Silver medal and two bronze medals in 2023; and our ACSL Junior team won one Bronze medal in 2023.

When you join our class you automatically become one of our team members at no cost, we would offer help to register, prepare, and compete in the final contest. 

The ACSL competition is split into four contests, each covering a unique set of concepts. To match the given schedule and give our students the best chance to succeed, we split the course into four parts of three 90 minutes lessons each. The material covered in this course is recommended for motivated students with moderate to extensive mathematical experience. No coding is involved, but the material requires practice and will challenge students academically. Students will take the official ACSL Contest after the third class of each part, and results can be displayed on the ACSL national leaderboard. Students who perform well on a national level may be invited to participate in the ACSL Finals following the end of our course: 


Part A- Number Systems, Recursion, Branching

	Lesson 1: Lecture
		-> Number Systems
		-> Recursion
		-> Branching, ‘What does this Program Do?’
	Lesson 2: Practice
		-> Conversions between number systems
		-> Solving Recursive Functions
		-> Predicting output for sections of pseudocode that use branching
		-> Official Programming Problem from past ACSL contests
	Lesson 3: Final Review and Contest 1
		-> Review and Preparation
		-> ACSL Previous Contest problem sets

Part B- Prefix and Postfix Notations, Bit-String Flicking, Loops

	Lesson 4: Lecture 2
		-> Prefix and Postfix Notations
		-> Bit-String Flicking
		-> Loops, ‘What does this program do?’
	Lesson 5: Practice
		-> Evaluating expressions of different notations
		-> Solving bit-string based expressions
		-> Predicting output for sections of pseudocode that use loops
		-> Official Programming Problem from past ACSL contests
	Lesson 6: Final Review and Contest 2
		-> Review and Preparation
		-> ACSL Previous Contest problem sets

Part C- Boolean Algebra, Data Structures, Arrays

	Lesson 7: Lecture 3
		-> Booleans, boolean operators and conditionals
		-> Laws of Boolean Algebra
		-> Data Structures: Binary Trees, Stacks, Queues
		-> Arrays, ‘What does this program do?’ 
	Lesson 8: Practice
		-> Evaluating boolean expressions
		-> Building and using binary trees, stacks, and queues
		-> Predicting output for pseudocode using arrays
-> Official Programming Problem from past ACSL contests
	Lesson 9: Final Review and Contest 3
		-> Review and Preparation
		-> ACSL Previous Contest problem sets

Part D- Graph Theory, Digital Electronics, Strings

	Lesson 10: Lecture 4
		-> Reading and creating undirected graphs 
		-> Adjacency matrices, cycles, and other graph theory
		-> Boolean Circuits
		-> Strings, ‘What does this program do?’
	Lesson 11: Practice
		-> Evaluating factors about directed and undirected graphs
		-> Simplifying expressions for digital circuits using boolean gates
		-> Predicting output for pseudocode using Strings
		-> Official Programming Problem from past ACSL contests
	Lesson 12: Final Review 
		-> Review and Preparation
		-> ACSL Previous Contest problem sets