Encourage students by reminding them that they can become great at computer science through hard work, even if they’ve gotten a 1 or a score lower than they’re comfortable with on the AP test, or if they are not currently a star student.
Emphasize that students’ personal interest in CS is more important than just getting good grades in CS classes for determining their success in CS.
Remind students about steps of the problem-solving process as they develop algorithms to solve programming problems.
Even if students are developing useful strategies for problem solving, they can be easily discouraged if they don’t see immediate, good results.
Students often get stuck because they start working on a problem without thinking about what they need to know and do in order to get a working solution.