Emphasize that students’ personal interest in CS is more important than just getting good grades in CS classes for determining their success in CS.
Emphasize that students should know which HTML tags are self-contained to make writing and debugging code easier.
When creating websites, many misconceptions students have arise from not fully understanding CSS, Cascading Style Sheets.
When developing for the web, have students run their code in multiple browsers to ensure compatibility.
Take extra time to encourage beginner students to learn more about CS, by (1) promoting AP CS and (2) using a final project for students already taking AP CS
When advertising your course, make it clear that any students “willing to do the work” are “wanted in the course,” and use titles like “Be a software engineer” or “Be an innovator” for your course or course modules.
Team up with teachers of lower grades to ensure that your students are sufficiently prepared for the rigor of more advanced classes.
Introduce a new concept by having students modify existing, well-defined programs before writing programs from scratch.
Teach students that running tests cannot prove that a code works. It can, however, prove that code is not working.
Use College Board’s AP Central for additional resources (e.g., software, videos, and other teaching material) when teaching AP CS courses.
For AP CS courses, consider using the linked Java API that only contains the subset of classes and methods that the AP course uses.
Lay out what good programming style consists of for your class to encourage good style and make debugging easier.
Use a variety of teaching styles to keep your students’ attention throughout the duration of the class period.
To appeal to students, assign interdisciplinary projects that allow them to combine programming with work from subjects that interest them.