After teaching students some basics (stage, sprites, costumes, loops, movement, ask/answer, broadcast/receive, variables), I challenged them to create their own projects.
Spoiler alert - it can! All the technology-based innovations around us like the computers we are sitting at to connect and communicate are possible because many people wrote the code.
In these videos, twelve Scratch educators share examples of student work, lesson plan ideas, assessment rubrics or other experiences from using Scratch in their classrooms.
By the end of this project students have created an animated biome. I have used this with third grade students for two years with great results each time. Tutorials and handouts included.