Use short video lessons for middle school age students to keep their attention on the content because students struggle to focus on demos at the board at this age.
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.
Check out Professor Colleen Lewis’ online Scratch curriculum for ready-to-use CS classroom activities and for ideas for your own curriculum.
Install the offline editor on student machines in your Scratch course in case the online editor is not available.
Give students guided notes (i.e., partially-completed notes that students complete) to help them stay engaged and learn from lectures or readings. It may be especially helpful to include vocabulary lists.
Use worked examples (step-by-step demonstrations of how to perform a task) to introduce new problem solving skills to students.
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.
Reinforce introductory drawing in Processing by having students draw a simple logo students are familiar because using a recognized cultural icon students helps keep students motivated.