Grade 12 — Engineering with Git

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)

CDC Grade 12 Unit 7 Software Development Process (Waterfall, Agile: Scrum and XP, requirements, Gantt charts, testing) and Unit 8 Software Project (group project, at most four members, 10 practical hours; GitHub named among suggested tools) are the natural home for modules 2, 4 and 8. The capstone here is a longer extension of Unit 8.

Big idea: professional teams ship safely, repeatedly. Length: ≈ 20 periods (to calibrate to CDC hours). Accounts: Learners 13+; teacher-managed organisations; capstone clients only with written consent. Tools: Git internals tools, CI (GitHub Actions / Forgejo Actions), static analysis/check scripts.

How this chapter is built

Grade 12 turns habits into engineering: first understanding the machine (internals), then the systems professionals build around it — strategies, automation, releases, security, AI review and debugging — all applied in a six-week capstone.

 M1  internals              (the machine)
 M2  strategies             (team rules)
 M3  CI                     (robots)
 M4  SemVer                 (promises)
 M5  security               (safety)
 M6  AI diffs               (judgement)
 M7  blame/bisect           (detective work)
 M8  capstone               (all together)
 M9  where next             (beyond school)

Modules

#	Module	Periods	Tiers	Key ideas
1	Git from the inside	3	0–3	blob, tree, commit, refs
2	Branching strategies	2	0–3	trunk-based, GitHub flow, Gitflow, protection
3	CI automation	3	1–3	workflows, runners, required checks
4	Releases and SemVer	2	1–3	MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH, changelog
5	Security	2	1–3	secrets, incident checklist, signing, supply chain
6	Reviewing AI-assisted changes	2	0–3	explain every line
7	blame and bisect	2	0–3	binary search, bisect run
8	Team capstone	8	1–3	professional process
9	Where Git goes next	3	0–3	pathway map

Chapter outcomes

1. describe Git's object model
2. choose and justify a branching strategy
3. write and read CI workflows
4. version releases with SemVer
5. prevent and respond to secret leaks
6. review AI-assisted diffs responsibly
7. locate a bug with bisect

Free resources used in this chapter

Pro Git chapters 7 and 10, Git from the Bottom Up, MIT Missing Semester, Semantic Versioning, GitHub/Forgejo Actions docs, pre-commit, gitleaks, OpenSSF Scorecard, GitHub Skills (Actions, releases, supply chain) and the PLOS Ten Simple Rules paper. Full list: free resource library.

Assessment

Capstone rubric, CI green, viva on design decisions. First-draft item bank: assessments/g12-item-bank.md (to be reviewed after Pilot 1).

Capstone

A 3–4 person team project for 6+ weeks (CDC's software-project unit caps groups at four). Practice repo: practice-repos/g12-capstone-starter/.

After Grade 12

Continue with After Grade 12: the foundation, consolidated and Version control in any project.