Teaching guide: Intro to JS - Text and strings

What the student will learn

• How to display text in their programs, with the text() command.
• How to resize text using the textSize() command.
• How to use variables to store strings of text.
• How to concatenate multiple strings of text together with variables, using the + operator.

The student will be able to write code like:

Where students struggle

• Students often forget to call fill() before displaying text. If they don’t call it, then their text will be transparent (invisible!).
• Students may struggle with the syntax of strings - like using mismatched quotation marks (starting with a double quotation mark and ending with a single quotation mark) or often just leaving off quotation marks entirely (which confuses the program, as it will think it’s a variable).
• When students try to concatenate multiple strings together, they often forget to put a + sign between each of the strings. Encourage them to scan their code carefully to look for that type of problem.

Additional materials: Trivia questions