Help students see that they’re building basic understanding over the course of the semester that will turn into wider understanding since they may become frustrated with their perceived lack of progress.

First you need to know how to do addition, but you didn’t understand how subtraction is related to addition until much later, when you had the whole picture.
Basic computer science is the same way, you have to learn the topics first. Later, when you have the whole picture, it will become clear how things relate to each other.

Let students know the need to have faith in the process. There is a lot of little things they have to know before they can grasp the bigger picture.

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