Novice programming students face high failure and drop-out rates for many reasons with one of the most obvious being difficulty with the material. Students being presented with additional learning resources will often not engage with them effectively or in some cases, at all. This paper presents an initial framework for designing formative assessments, coined Code Diagram Queries (CDQs). The goal of CDQs is to act as a forcing function to engage students with formative diagrammatic material that will challenge and correct their current mental models for the notional machine of the language they are learning. Optional resources are often disregarded unless there are formative activities that drive them to interact with the materials. CDQs are questions meant to drive student interaction with material in a low-risk formative environment. This developmental environment allows students to explore new computer science concepts and expand on their understanding of them. I hypothesize that CDQs will help increase student engagement by leveraging additional materials and through this, help students accurately visualize and comprehend coding concepts. I will measure engagement with class materials and student confidence levels following their interactions with CDQs. This framework is meant to aid in the effective design of CDQs so that a student’s comprehension of code execution may be understood more deeply and then corrected as needed. The focus of this research is to provide new insights into the importance of guiding students through the construction of their mental models.