Encourage students to get the for-loop counter right before adding code inside the for loop this will reduce the amount of time spent troubleshooting for-loops and ensure students are scaffolded well.

Students might find it helpful to write out code that loops and prints a certain number of times, before adding in the content of their for loop.

Sometimes students may find it boring to focus on just this but it’s a vital topic to understand before moving forward.

For instance you might have students get comfortable writing the following code before they add more complicated code inside their for loop.

for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) { System.out.print (i); }

This code focuses explicitly on the loop-counter which helps reinforce practice on the loop-counter first.

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