Misconception: Students believe that reference pointers go both directions such that objects know what points to them.
Misconception: Students think that it’s possible to write methods that add attributes to a Java class.
Teach students to storyboard in Alice so they know a systematic process to follow when approaching challenging problems.
Misconception: Students have trouble understanding the difference between the “glide” and “go to” blocks in Scratch.
Misconception: Students think that when they create a new variable within a function, that function will automatically return that variable’s value when executed.
Have students practice creating an infographic as an option for the Visual Artifact component of the CSP Performance Task: Explore.
Misconception: Students believe that when they assign a = b, they are copying b into a rather than making a point to b.
Misconceptions: Students have difficulty distinguishing between the Broadcast and Say blocks in Scratch.
Misconception: Student think costumes are outfits rather than the overall appearance of a sprite in Scratch.
Teach students how the xy-coordinate system works before having them use motion blocks in Scratch so they don’t get confused by positive and negative numbers.
Introduce young students to degrees, decimals, and percentages so that they can use turn and sound blocks in Scratch.
Misconception: Students have trouble understanding that when the value of a variable is reassigned its previous value is irrelevant.