Learn to Teach Java: Boolean Expressions, If Statements, and Iteration

Programs would be very boring (and not useful) if they always performed the same instructions every time we ran them. We'll see how boolean expressions can be sued to control selection (if statements) to allow instructions be done based on some condition (e.g, randomness or user input). Using CS Awesome, we'll learn to create boolean expressions including logical AND and OR operators and how to use these to control if statements to allow programs to check conditions to vary behavior.

This week we'll go deeper and engage with some resources to support your teaching. You'll explore some questions to use in classroom analysis discussions (Peer Instruction), learn how these concepts are commonly assessed, prepare to help students who are having trouble with CS Awesome assessments, and begin to scaffold students problem solving skills. Finally, you can check your own Unit 3 Java and Java Teacher mastery on our end of Unit 3 quizzes.

Iteration, the power to repeat a set of instructions, is where the full power of computing comes from. Really, without it, we wouldn't have computers. Using CS Awesome, we'll learn to define conditional (while) and counted (for) loops and start to see the kind of more interesting things we can do with loops!