February AP CSA Insider: Course Pacing, PD Resources, and More!
🗓️ Course Pacing: Where Students Should Be
As we wrap up February, classes following the College Board's recommended pacing should be wrapping up Unit 3 (Class Creation) and beginning the substantial Unit 4 (Data Collections) — the largest unit at 50+ class periods and up to 40% of the exam.
If you're a bit behind, don't panic, but do prioritize strategically: Unit 4's 1D Arrays and ArrayLists are essential for both FRQ 3 (Data Analysis) and FRQ 4 (2D Arrays), so ensure these concepts get adequate time. Remember that Unit 2 (Selection and Iteration) and Unit 4 together account for up to 75% of the exam, so if you need to make trade-offs, lean into these heavily-weighted areas. A good goal is to complete Unit 4 by mid-March to early-April in order to leave enough time for cumulative review and practice exams before the May test.
💻 Digital Exam Prep
The AP Computer Science A exam will use the Bluebook App. You can now download the app and preview the exam to see the tools that students will have available to them during the exam. The College Board also has a variety of resources available on their Digital AP Exams page. Spend some time exploring these resources to ensure that you are preparing students for success in May!
📋 Teaching Tip: Arrays vs ArrayLists
One of the most common stumbling blocks in Unit 4 is mixing up array and ArrayList syntax, like writing list.length instead of list.size(), or using bracket notation on an ArrayList. Consider including a focused compare/contrast activity where students implement the same algorithm (finding a maximum, counting matches, or removing duplicates) using both data structures side by side. Have them create a two-column reference sheet documenting the syntax differences.
Bonus: revisit this comparison when you reach 2D arrays, adding arr.length (rows) vs. arr[0].length (columns) to their reference sheet.
📊 AP CSA Project of the Month
The CodeHS Project catalog offers a multitude of projects to enhance your course. This month's featured project is Letter Histogram. In this project, students will use strings and arrays to create a histogram of the number of letters in a given text. The project reads in a file for students and they will then analyze each letter of the file to create and display a histogram of the letters.
🧑🏫 Upcoming AP CSA Webinar
Preparing Students for the AP CSA FRQs
Join this interactive webinar to learn more about what to expect as it relates to FRQs and how to better prepare your students.
Date: March 4th, 2025
Time: 3:00pm CT
⚙️ PD Teaching Cohorts
CodeHS is offering year-long professional learning cohorts for the 2026–27 school year, supporting educators with guided learning, practical strategies, and a collaborative community. One of our cohorts is a Teaching AP Computer Science A (AP CSA) cohort! This cohort will kickoff this July.
☕️ Java Autograder Updates
We've made some Java Autograder updates!
1️⃣ Console Input/Output Preset Autograder
Allows teachers to verify that a program’s console output contains specific text, either generally or when given defined user input values—no custom grading code required.
2️⃣ Method Call Return Value Preset Autograder
Automatically instantiates a student-created class with specified constructor arguments, calls a designated method, and checks that the method returns the expected value.
You can see these updates in your preset configs for autograders.
💬 Stay Connected
Explore the AP CSA Hub
-The CodeHS Team