Grade 11 — Open-Source Contributor

Unpiloted draft

Core lessons are written but have not been tried in a classroom. Grade placement of topics is unverified against the CDC syllabus (see research/decisions.md).

CDC fit (verified)

The CDC Grade 11–12 curriculum lists, for Unit 4 Web Development, a group web-app activity "using GitHub for version control". Modules 4–6 and 8 support that activity directly.

Big idea: you can improve software and knowledge that others also use. Length: ≈ 20 periods (to calibrate to CDC hours). Accounts: Learners 13+ with teacher oversight; contribute only to vetted projects. Tools: Git, GitHub/Codeberg/Forgejo, the curriculum repo itself, partner projects with consent.

How this chapter is built

Grades 8–10 happened inside the classroom. Grade 11 steps outside: other people's projects, other people's rules, and real open data. It also adds the "sharp tools" (rebase, reset, reflog) once students have the judgement to use them safely.

 M1  licences                (may I?)
 M2  read a project          (how do they work?)
 M3  triage                  (what can I do?)
 M4  first PR                (contribute)
 M5  rebase/stash/reset      (sharp tools, safely)
 M6  conventions             (shared habits)
 M7  process models          (why teams work so)
 M8  data project            (real data)

Modules

#	Module	Periods	Tiers	Key ideas
1	Licences and attribution	2	0–3	CC BY, MIT, GPL, TASL credit
2	Reading a project	1	1–3	README, CONTRIBUTING, git grep
3	Triage: a good first issue	1	0, 2–3	size, clarity, claiming
4	Your first PR	2	2–3	fork → PR → review
5	rebase, stash, revert, reset	2	0–3	golden rule, reflog
6	Commit and branch conventions	1	0–3	message body, Conventional Commits
7	Process models and Git workflows	2	0–3	waterfall, Scrum, XP
8	Data project	3	1–3	raw/clean, DATA.md

Chapter outcomes

1. explain common open licences and credit sources correctly
2. find an appropriate first issue
3. open a pull request to an open project
4. use stash, rebase, revert and reset with care
5. write clear conventional messages
6. version and document a dataset

Free resources used in this chapter

First Contributions, Open Source Guides, choosealicense.com, Creative Commons, SPDX, Conventional Commits, Pro Git chapters 3, 5–7, Learn Git Branching's rebase and cherry-pick levels, The Turing Way and Software Carpentry's licensing, open-science and citation episodes. Full list: free resource library.

Assessment

Portfolio (CONTRIBUTIONS.md), reflection, viva on a PR the student reviewed. First-draft item bank: assessments/g11-item-bank.md (to be reviewed after Pilot 1).

Capstone

A merged contribution and a CONTRIBUTIONS.md portfolio. Contribution targets: this curriculum repo first; 3–5 partner projects are still to be agreed with maintainers' consent (FOSS Nepal, NOSK, Open Knowledge Nepal, Code for Nepal are candidates — not yet contacted).

Ready for Grade 12?

A student is ready when they can, without help: credit a CC BY source correctly; open a PR to a project that follows its CONTRIBUTING rules; choose revert vs reset by asking "is it pushed?"; and recover a commit with reflog.