Explain nested for loops using a car odometer, the innermost loop controlling the ones digit must cycle fully before the outer loops steps forward, to help students better understand nested loops through a real world example.
Misconception: The update in the index in a for loop (i.e., the third part of the for loop control statement) happens after the all the steps inside of the loop have happened.
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.
Use some of the following real world constructs to help beginning students form better understandings of abstract object-oriented principles.
Use Potato Head Toys to teach classes, objects, methods, and properties so that students develop hands on experience with abstract topics.
Have students instantiate personal hall pass objects when they wish to leave the classroom to help them learn that the values passed to a constructor have to match the number, type, and order of the arguments in the method signature.
Show the class different ways nations choose their next monarch to illustrate pre-order and level order traversals as students visualize tree traversal methods.
Use popular, repetitive music to teach loops in a beginning course because this motivates the purpose and application of loops while keeping students engaged by referencing popular culture.
Scaffold students to evaluating and understanding 3 === “3” in Javascript using the following steps to help students learn the difference between confusing comparison operators.