Effective Encouragement

Pick a student to live-code during class to show other students that their peers have many of the same strengths and weaknesses that they do when coding.

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Encourage students who have worked ahead in the Code.org curriculum to explore PlayLab so they can use their time constructively by continuing to code.

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Reassure students that it’s okay if they don’t initially understand a concept in order to motivate them to keep trying.

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Beware of the expert blind spot to ensure you can help your students overcome the initial difficulties that are intrinsic to learning new content.

Share Beware of the expert blind spot to ensure you can help your students overcome the initial difficulties that are intrinsic to learning new content. with Facebook Share Beware of the expert blind spot to ensure you can help your students overcome the initial difficulties that are intrinsic to learning new content. with Twitter

Emphasize that Scratch is REAL coding; this lets students know that programming in educational languages like Scratch or Python is valuable even though these languages aren’t commonly used in industry.

Share Emphasize that Scratch is REAL coding; this lets students know that programming in educational languages like Scratch or Python is valuable even though these languages aren’t commonly used in industry. with Facebook Share Emphasize that Scratch is REAL coding; this lets students know that programming in educational languages like Scratch or Python is valuable even though these languages aren’t commonly used in industry. with Twitter

Reassure students struggling with common misconceptions that they’re not alone to bolster their confidence.

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When explaining code to the class, project your code and use a tablet to draw on top of it. Ask students for debugging suggestions to make them more comfortable finding bugs and to show them that all programmers, even you, make mistakes.

Share When explaining code to the class, project your code and use a tablet to draw on top of it. Ask students for debugging suggestions to make them more comfortable finding bugs and to show them that all programmers, even you, make mistakes. with Facebook Share When explaining code to the class, project your code and use a tablet to draw on top of it. Ask students for debugging suggestions to make them more comfortable finding bugs and to show them that all programmers, even you, make mistakes. with Twitter

Create a group of student mentors who have already completed your school’s introductory computer science courses to give current students peer role models.

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Provide consistent feedback opportunities from the very first day of the course to assist struggling students early on and prevent them from falling behind.

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Give students a set number of late homework passes so they can give themselves extensions and hold themselves accountable for deadlines.

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