Students Frequently asked questions during Scratch lessons
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Hi everyone
I am now entering the 3rd year of my Phd looking at games-based learning (focus on game making). I have throughout the past 3 years during my undergraduate studies and now phd been researching in Primary Schools (Elementary school) with Scratch and getting the children to create their own games. however the aim of this is ideally to enable the class teachers to teach Scratch and game making (Game design is a part of the Computing Science Curriculum within Scotland). now that I hav eundertaken pilot studies in school I am now preparing teachers to teach the 8 lesson game making course totheir students (ages 8-11) and am creating a teacher guide for them. However what I was wondering is do any educators have any Frequently asked questions from students they would like to share? Personally I have noticed a pattern and in fact on 2 questions crop up time after time. I would like others to share their experiences though in order to compare. (I will post the teacher guide soon along with those 2 FAQ's)
Amanda
I actually teach Scratch in an after-school club. Is that interesting for your project ?
I have only been teaching with Scratch for about five weeks, but here are some of my observations:
1. My class of 25 high school students can be divided into thirds. One third of the class finds my pace too slow (and wants more challenges—which I try to give individually), another third find it too fast (and wants more explanations—which I try to give/repeat to the entire group whenever I can) and the final third seems to find my pace to their liking.
2. Some students want me to solve every problem for them (which is not going to happen).
3. Errors are bound to appear in some student projects because of the way a student used their blocks. I try to have other students help problem solve, because it can be time intensive.
4. I require my students to spend time creating sprites and backgrounds, which can give me some time to analyze code.
5. Unknown errors will appear and disappear in some student projects for no logical reason.
Do any teachers have any comments about using Scratch in the class? Are there any problems that you face when teaching with Scratch. I would really be interested to know.