Train teaching assistants to use the Socratic method so they can help students improve their reasoning skills.
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 on how to provide feedback using the growth mindset so they can keep their students motivated to improve their skills and understanding.
Create a code of conduct for unpaid teaching assistants (TAs) to make department and institution expectations clear so violations are easily acted on.
Misconception: Students often forget to include a FOREVER block around IF blocks in Scratch when programming games.
Show students multiple examples of iteration in Scratch to help them understand and recognize more abstract programming patterns.
Encourage students to make Scratch sprites smaller when making games in order to ease game play and make it more fun.
Encourage students to break up their Scratch scripts into smaller chunks to help them test and debug their code.
Let students solve problems the long, hard, intuitive way first to motivate the use of more advanced Scratch blocks that can help them solve problems in a shorter, faster, more flexible way.