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The first quarter exam will be in Room 405 (tentatively) on Monday October 9, 2023 (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 an hour to answer around 40 questions which are a combination of true/false, multiple choice, and short answer questions. You will then have 30 minutes to answer 2 Free Response questions. The first 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 first quarter exam is a cumulative exam that covers
- Classroom labs (including the Runestone exercises)
- AP Classroom (Unit 1 Sampler, Unit 1 PPC A, B, Unit 2 PPC A, Qtr 1 MC Practice)
- Chapters 3 through 5 of the Litvin textbook (Homework, Labs, Chapter Tests).
Links to Practice Problems
- Qtr 1 MC Practice assignment at AP Classroom
- codingbat.com Warm-up 1
- codingbat.com Logic 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 methodspublic
, - 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 previousif
- 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 avoid
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!