Ask students “What is the simplest input to this problem?” when teaching recursion to help students learn to identify appropriate base cases for each argument of their function.
Use Python’s map function to introduce students to loops early on, because the map function is an provides an easy transition to loops.
Ask students "do you know in advance how many times you'll need to go through the loop?" when deciding between using a for or a while loop, because this is a good rule of thumb for them to use.
Help students build intuition about recursion in Python by comparing each recursive call to a function call, which may be more intuitive for students in introductory classes.