Encourage students to break up their Scratch scripts into smaller chunks to help them test and debug their code.
Encourage students to make Scratch sprites smaller when making games in order to ease game play and make it more fun.
Show students multiple examples of iteration in Scratch to help them understand and recognize more abstract programming patterns.
Misconception: Students often forget to include a FOREVER block around IF blocks in Scratch when programming games.
Create a code of conduct for unpaid teaching assistants (TAs) to make department and institution expectations clear so violations are easily acted on.
Train teaching assistants on how to provide feedback using the growth mindset so they can keep their students motivated to improve their skills and understanding.
Create an environment where students feel safe approaching teaching assistants for help to ensure they get all the support they need to succeed in the course.
Train teaching assistants to use the Socratic method so they can help students improve their reasoning skills.
Create an online staff chat-room to help undergraduate teaching assistants form community, ask for help, and share teaching strategies.
Host group grading sessions to provide opportunities for teaching assistants to interact with each other and avoid falling behind in grading.
Organize weekly sessions for teaching assistants to discuss their experiences assisting students, learn from each other, and prepare for teaching.
Give teaching assistants (TAs) opportunities for contributing to the course and TA program to increase their investment in the class and reduce your workload.
Adjust all assignments to be a certain length in order to create and maintain consistent deadlines (e.g., weekly) so students remember when their homework is due.
Use the w3schools.com online HTML, CSS, and JavaScript tutorials to teach students web development through concrete examples rather than abstract definitions.
Misconception: Students mix up whether model class names and database table names should be singular or plural in Ruby on Rails.
Keep a running list of bugs you encounter to share with students so that they can see you run into bugs too.
Write an exception inside of a loop, then outside of a loop when live-coding so that students learn the effects of placement on exceptions.
Misconception: Students have trouble understanding the difference between Get, Post, Put/Patch, and Delete in Ruby on Rails Routing.