When giving group work to students in class, assign students roles and have them introduce themselves to ensure your students feel comfortable asking each other for help.
Use a random method for selecting students to answer questions in order to give all students an equal opportunity to participate.
Create a classroom routine where students write regularly using a discussion board to help students get practice writing in a computer science context for the Computer Science Principles Performance Tasks.
Have students complete practice CSP Performance Tasks so that students can get feedback and coaching on their performance before the actual test where you’re not allowed to help.
Show students what code looks like with and without inheritance to motivate the reasons for using it.
Show students what code looks like with and without switch statements to motivate the reasons for using them.
Help autistic students and students with emotional behavior disorders by encouraging them to try as hard as they can to figure out solutions when they want to give up.
Assign students to draw a dodecagon in Scratch before introducing repeat blocks so that once you introduce the repeat block, it is clear that it is a time-saving block.
Before class, create a glossary of coding symbols on the board to help students verbalize their code during class discussions and oral exercises.
Have students use simple functions in Scratch to create games and stories to share with their classmates in order to learn Scratch’s functionality.
Integrate Hour of Code into your course curriculum by having students turn something in for their completed Hour of Code to hold them accountable for their work and prevent this from feeling like a one-off event.
Encourage your students to utilize online resources to further their understanding and interest in the course material.
Misconception: when working with Booleans, students assume that false means incorrect and true means correct.
Use Scratch to teach programming to students with neurodiversity because the visual nature of this language can make CS concepts more accessible.
Encourage students to answer one another’s questions in lab and office hours to help both confident and confused students better understand the course concepts.
Stand or sit among your students in small group settings to encourage more student-driven discussions.
Assume the role of a confused student and ask your students questions, prompting them to answer your questions in order to further their understanding of the material.