Have students use Android devices with App Inventor to ease the process of viewing their app on a device; this provides them with meaningful motivation.
Design class activities that incorporate a student's local knowledge with specific computer science content and practices to enable engagement in deep learning.
When students are learning HTML and CSS, have them make personal websites featuring their resumés and hobbies or websites about another topic they find meaningful.
Have students use spreadsheets to analyze a dataset of their choice in order to provide an interesting and relevant context for developing their spreadsheet skills.
Encourage your students to utilize online resources to further their understanding and interest in the course material.
Assign students an “all-about-me” project to practice introductory Scratch content and to engage with computational thinking through expressing themselves.
Scaffold students through reverse engineering existing Scratch projects to help them gain competency in important concepts like message passing, variables, and event-based programming.
Encourage students to work on side projects to make sure they are getting enough programming practice and to make them more marketable.
Ask students if the games they are designing are games they’d want to buy to keep students making progress toward your learning goals for them.