APCS: AP Computer Science A @sfhs

The first quarter exam will be in Room 405 on Monday October 7, 2024 (90 min). The average of the two quarter exams is worth 20% of your grade. The exam will be similar to the chapter tests that we have had. You have 90 minutes to answer 3 Free Response questions, and around 40 other questions which are a combination of true/false, short answer, and multiple choice.

The first Free Response Question question will ask you to write a method (much like a codingbat.com warmup exercise), and the second question will ask you to write a complete class from scratch. I will give you a choice of methods and classes, and you just need select one of each to write. The third question is a Subclass question where your are provided a super class, and you need to write a subclass with a constructor and a method.

The first quarter exam is a cumulative exam that covers

The summer assignment
Turtle Graphics
Classroom labs (including mathorama wiki, Litvin, and Runestone exercises)
AP Classroom (Class 7 Sampler, Videos, Qtr 1 MC Practice, Qtr 1 FRQ Practice)
Chapters 3 through 5 of the Litvin textbook (Homework, Labs, Chapter Tests). If it has been a quile, you may wish to re-read as least the paragraphs in bold. I hope you find that Chapter 3 makes a lot more sense after Chapter 5!

Links to Practice Problems

Qtr 1 MC and FRQ Practice assignment at AP Classroom
codingbat.com Warm-up 1
codingbat.com Logic 1
Writing classes Practice
Old Practice FRQs' for Qtr 1

Things to watch out for:

Constructors should initialize the class's fields (fields are private, to encapsulate)
When initialzing fields in a constructor, Do not mention its type- this accidentally makes a local variable instead of initializing the classes field that has the same name.
Remember to make fields private and methods public,
Remember local variables are never public nor private
Remember method names should use () for the parameter list, even if there are no parameters
Watch for dangling else statements (p 148) - without brackets, the last else belongs to the previous if
Do not add a System.out.print when no printing is requested (This can be a 1 or 2 point Extraneous code that causes side effect penalty on the AP Exam)
Do not use local variables before first declaring them ( also a AP scoring penalty).
Variables are declared ONLY ONCE, not every time.
Do not assign a value to a parameter inside a method unless you are asked to (also a AP scoring penalty called Destruction of data)
Never use return in a constructor
Remember to return something of the same type as a method's header.
Do not return something when writing a void method ( a method that isn't supposed to return something (This too has a AP scoring penalty)

Finally, please remember to get a good night's rest and a healthy breakfast! Good Luck!