Remind students to spend lots of time carefully reading the free-response questions on the AP CS A exam to prepare them for this portion of the exam.
Use PEZ ® dispensers to demonstrate the push, pop, and peek methods for stacks to provide a clear and accessible illustration of these methods.
Organize an activity where students make phone calls to their classmates with the goal of summing the numbers 1 through 6 in order to demonstrate recursion.
Ask students “Do we need a loop here?” to help them determine the appropriate loop to use without having to know the proper syntax to write that loop.
Have students implement an algorithm in Java to solve mazes so they can practice manipulating 2D arrays, stacks, and queues.
Have students sort specific topics in computer science into broader categories in an activity that uses index cards to give them a big-picture understanding of concepts they are learning.
Have students make themselves cheat sheets so they are able to quickly look up syntax, which keeps them from spending too much time looking up these facts.
Walk students through clicking on links in Java Docs to figure out unknown words and concepts (like iterable) by exploring the detailed explanation; plus the AP test expects students to read Java Docs online.
Have students use a spiral notebook to keep track of important information to enhance their understanding of topics by writing down the material.
Start by having students transpose code from one loop type to the other when teaching all the different conditionals for the AP CS A exam.