[Katie_UPS]

If you're using Java, Codebat.com seems to have (read: I haven't used it, but looked at it) some good practice exercises that can help solidify concepts. LearnJavaOnline also seems to be a good walk-through website, but the "read this and go" method will most likely not go over well as its pretty boring.

If you have the resources, I high recommend doing some sort of class-room style teaching where you teach the basic ideas (variables, loops, syntax, etc) and then having a "lab" portion, where students are given tasks/goals and are able to code on their own or in pairs. You and your fellow programmer can oversee this portion and answer questions as they come up. You don't have to dive into robot-specific coding right away, but if you have a robot on hand that you can deploy code to, it would be most relevant/interesting for the newbies to have activities/tasks that are related to actual robot-coding.

If you do multiple days of this, where each day is a lecture followed by a lab, you could, in the least, get students comfortable with basic programming. The most you could achieve really has no bounds.

Its worth noting that the best way to learn programming is by programming.