Compare AND/OR gates to series and parallel circuits, respectively, to connect electrical engineering and computer programming.
Compare exclusive OR gates to a light controlled by switches at the bottom and top of a staircase to explain how XOR logic works in a familiar situation.
Combat stereotypes about computer science and computer scientists. This shows students that, regardless of their personality or other hobbies outside of CS, they could become computer scientists too!
Split students into groups responsible for programming different tasks in Java to create a Set game, this will allow them to learn to distributed work in environments that mirror industry.
Compare objects in Java to cloud-hosted documents, such as Google Docs, for a relatable analogy to explain object references with.
Have students practice looping through an array in as many ways as possible, such as forwards and backwards, to increase their comfort with array looping.
Have students pay close attention to loop bounds when tracing through code to help them identify and avoid off-by-one errors caused this way.
Discuss and explore the difference between additive (sequential) and multiplicative (nested) loop structures to give students practice reasoning about loops.
Encourage students to replace variables with values when tracing through code to reduce the necessary cognitive load.