Use Productive Talk Moves to enhance class discussions in order have high quality discussions that engage everyone and further student understanding of the material.
Ask a question that is tangential to the course content at the beginning of the course to teach students how to have a class discussion in low-stakes context so that students create a classroom environment that is safe for engaging in debates.
Arrange the computers in your classroom in a layout that allows you to easily view what all the students are working on.
Have student video tape their Arduino circuits to make it easier for you to grade because you don’t have to collect the Arduinos or set aside class time to observe the circuits in action.
Keep the Scratch scripting area organized using the clean up button to ensure that there aren’t dangling scripts and to make debugging and understanding scripts easier.
Misconception: Students get confused reconciling the coordinate system with the point Scratch uses as the center for Sprites.
Mention to students that individual blocks in Scratch and Snap can be tested by double clicking them in the block library so they know this useful, non-intuitive trick for learning what an individual block does.
Scaffold students through reverse engineering existing Scratch projects to help them gain competency in important concepts like message passing, variables, and event-based programming.
Use the Beauty and Joy of Computing’s kaleidoscope assignment to integrate Art into CS so that students get excited about STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math).
Start programming courses with HTML to get students to engage with programming languages by building off of their pre-existing, experiential curiosity.