Misconception: In Java, students struggle with equal signs because they mistakenly see them as a sign of symmetry.
Teach simple Java with graphics first using the Draw/Roll Die activity, having students call objects and methods before defining their own, for an engaging way to reinforce material.
Misconception: Students believe that while loops tell the program when to stop rather than when to continue.
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.
Justify the reason that Java Strings are immutable by showing how Strings might be packed together in the heap to help students resolve incomplete understandings in their mental model.
Misconception: Students incorrectly assume that Java’s substring method is destructive and wrongly anticipate the original string will change.
Students have trouble seeing the connection between models (UMLs, etc.) and code so they only want to focus on coding, a problem when teaching modeling.