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Suggestions for intro to CS with scratch for 1st and 3rd graders

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Matthew Karlgaard
Member
March 13, 2013

I'm an engineer and a parent of a 1st grader and a 3rd grader in a gifted and talented program.  I plan to spend 1 or 2 1-hour sessions with each of their classes introducing the kids to programming and would like some suggestions for 1 or 2 easy "Hello World" type lessons/tutorials that I could do with the kids.  My thought is to introduce them to some basic concepts and tools and let them go to work.  I'm not really sure where it will lead yet, but I'm hoping the respective teachers might continue it and have a couple lessons past what I work on with them.  I'm also counting on at least a few of the more interested students downloading scratch at home and playing with it more.

Replies
Harry Du
Member
December 09, 2015
Just saw this.  I use code.org's curriculum to teach the 1st to 3rd grader.  The result is great. You actually don't need a computer. iPad or Android Tablet will work. 

Hope that helps.
Harry
Matthew Karlgaard
Member
April 01, 2013

 Michelle,

I ended up just doing an ad-hoc lesson for both classes.  I started out explaining how scripts work and introducing them to some basic commands to change position, color, etc... and then had them spend time experimenting.  They came up with quite a few great ideas.

 

I was amazed at how quickly the 1st graders caught on.  The 3rd graders progressed even faster, and we eventually gave them a challenge task of making a sprite move through obstacles (using commands for arrow buttons, and then autonomously).  An alternate challenge was to create a conversation between 2 or more sprites.

 

The 3rd grade teacher is planning to use Scratch to teach cartesian coordinate system, and maybe some other math concepts.

 

It was a very rewarding day for me and great for the kids.  I think about half of them downloaded the program at home.  I'm glad I found out about Scratch - what a great way to introduce programming to kids.

 

Regards,

Matt

Michelle Choi
Member
April 10, 2013

Hi Matt,

Thanks for sharing! It sounds like both you and the students enjoyed experimenting with Scratch.

I love the idea of giving the students challenges/obstacles to explore other blocks and scripts. Teaching cartesian coordinates in Scratch is a useful one, especially using the "Glide to" block. You could also mention to the 3rd grade teacher that there is an xy-grid background in Scratch that might be useful.

M

Michelle Choi
Member
April 01, 2013

Hi Matthew,

I'd love to hear how the session planning is going. Have you checked out the activities in the Scratch Curriculum Guide? There are some great introductory lesson plans in there such as the About Me and Dance Party projects. Also, the Scratch Cards might be a useful resource for helping students get started.

M