Classroom Practicescs-coaching-knowledge-base.md

Reading Code

Front: When students read code, they create a mental model of what will happen when a program runs. By reading code, students begin to notice patterns in style and syntax in and across programming languages. Reading code not only builds programming skills, but also strengthens reading comprehension. Teaching strategies for reading and investigating code provides scaffolding for programming fluency.

Back: Have students practice reading code. Ask students to predict what will happen when the code is run. Have them translate it to pseudocode. Ask students to look for patterns, structure, and syntax. Have them identify the purpose of specified blocks of code within a program. This should be a student-led experience: avoid reading code to students except to model.

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