resources for an afterschool Scratch club for 4th-5th graders
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Hi,
I have been asked to teach Scratch in a once-a-week afterschool class for 4th and 5th graders. I am a computer science faculty member, so I am used to teaching undergrads. I have a little experience with Scratch, mainly from helping my 11 year old son who uses it. I also am teaching AppInventor this semester to undergrads who have never programmed before - AppInventor has a lot of similarities to Scratch. I would like to do this because our school district is badly lacking in computer science content at any level. However, I am also seriously time-slammed so I am hesitating about taking this on.
So my questions are
First, is this even realistic? Our school district is good, and the kids are sharp, but will they be able to do anything at all in Scratch given the constrained nature of the program? And, if I take this on, I only have 3 weeks to prepare, with little spare time due to my regular teaching and research commitments - are there resources out there aimed at this age group? I don't have any experience teaching kids except for working with my own. I know I would need appropriate projects and materials in order to do this since I don't have the expertise or time to develop anything.
Is this a really Bad Idea, or is it a Good Idea to take this on?
thanks,
Bonnie MacKellar
I'm looking at starting a 4th/5th grade Scratch club next year too! It's great to see that I'm in good company.
Can anyone point me in the direction of some quality examples of Scratch projects made by actual 4th and 5th graders? When we go class to class to pitch the club, I'd really like to be able to say, "Someone your age made this!", you know? It's one thing for me to show off something I made and try to tell them it's fun - I'm a boring grownup now.
Hi Eileen,
Nancy Costa is a 3rd-5th grade educator and her students have created wonderful Aesop Fables Scratch projects. She also presented some of the projects at a Scratch Educator Meetup last year. You can watch video of the Show & Tell presentation here.
Patrice Gans is also another educator that works with 4th and 5th graders. You can view some of her students' work here.
Those are only two examples, but there are many other elementary educators on ScratchEd. You might try searching for "4th" or "5th" on ScratchEd or filter for members who have indicated "elementary" education as part of their interests.
Hope that helps!
Michelle on behalf of the ScratchEd Team
I think it's a really good idea too. I have been teaching Scratch to 4th, 5th and 6th grade computer students this year at a public school in FL. They LOVE it! I can incorporate Geometry, Storytelling, Game Design or whatever and they learn iteration, variables, Boolean Logic. It's been a great success and many of them have downloaded Scratch at home and sent me their creations.
Bonnie,
Sorry to hear about that. Seems like a rash decision made by individuals who do not understand what this program is about. This is developed by the leading institution for technology in the world and is aimed to provide children with and easy to use and understand tool to nurture thier creativity and reinforce their computational reasoning. Do they really have a problem with a program develop and maintained by MIT? It is not like some shady commercial developer. Sorry...something I am passionate about.
Anyway I am starting a afterschool club at our elementary school. If I find anything interesting or helpful I will be sure to pass it along.
Thanks for all the helpful advice. Unfortunately, the word just came down from the district IT office that we can't run this program because they won't allow Scratch to be installed on the school computers. I may try to meet with them to convince them that it would be OK, so we could do the club next year. However, it is now too late for this year. Very sad.
Hi can you not run Scratch from usb pen drives ? it means then that Scratch is not being installed on any pc's and I am sure you would be able to get help with donations of usb's to do so anywhere.
Amanda
I've never tried that. Has anyone here run Scratch from USB drives successfully?
I am trying to find out what the objection was. Unfortunately, I am hearing this secondhand from the club coordinator. My guess is that she didn't know how to explain Scratch to the IT people. She is the one who recruited me, largely because she heard that another school district was doing this. I think I will try to meet with the IT people over the summer and work with them. I work with our IT people at my university all the time, so I sort of know their language.
Thanks!
Bonnie
Yes its easy to use, I carry one about with me. I just iinstall scratch onto the usb pen, It means when I am going into a school for the first time I can show them without have to worry about installation.
Good luck with your project :)
Amanda
Hi Bonnie, that's too bad. I also ran into the same road block when I tried to get a Scratch Club started at my son's middle school (6-8th grades) one spring. It's very hard to get schools to change anything in the middle of the year, and I was asking them to install a 'beta' version too which was viewed with suspicion. However, at the end of that school year I recruited support from a teacher in the school, and over the summer we got them to install Scratch on the computers, and started the club the following fall. That was six years ago, and the Scratch Club is still going strong (and the principal promotes it to incoming 5th graders when they visit!). So my advice would be to start asking for Scratch to be put on computers at the end of this school year, and to keep asking over the summer. If you wait until August they will probably have already decided what updates they're doing and it may be too late.
Good Luck!
--Chris
Hi Bonnie - So sad! Do you think they don't understand what Scratch is? Is such an easy, small, FREE application to install. Best of luck getting Scratch in your district.
If you get the chance to get this going, I agree with what others I have said. I have an afterschool Scratch Club with about 30 students grades 3-7. I rely heavily on the Scratch Cards (I have 20 sets), and the sample projects from the Curriculum Guide. I printed those out in color and laminated a bunch to have for project starters for students. I've also done 3 minute challenges where we toss out an idea and everyone tries to do it in 3 minutes, sharing successful projects. An important thing to keep in mind is having a goal to build towards - we share our projects at the Math Carnival night in March as well as at Art Night in May. We've also had a Share Day where parents are invited to the Club to view student projects - we had half the students sharing at a time so the students had the chance to view each other's work.
Hi,
If you show them the fundamentals in a 30 minute session and let them loose, they will come up with something good
I introduced the basics of Scratch to my son when he was about 9 years old. After quickly understanding the basics, he wrote a simple point and shoot program, 2 wizards, one pointing to the other shouts "shrikizio" and the other shrinks. He then added a bit of interaction, letting one move while the other tried to shoot. This is outright Harry Potter copy, but still interesting.
We won't be able to use the online community unfortunately! That isn't allowed in our district. I will check out the Scratch cards. Thanks!
I agree that there's additional structure that doesn't make sense for afterschool, but the activities (e.g. handouts that are located at the end of the guide) can work.
I ran an afterschool program for 4th and 5th graders that use the activities in the guide -- Something Surprising, All About Me, Dance Party, etc. -- not as prescribed activities, but as potential activities for kids to work on. I'd show a small aspect of Scratch, then let people loose to work on their own projects.
Something that has also worked well for me is to show a little each session, point kids to the Scratch online community or to the Scratch Cards.
Hope that helps!
Hi,
Yes, that was one of the first things I looked at. It seems like it is aimed at college students, or advanced high school students though. It is definitely way too much and too serious for an elementary afterschool club. Also, all I could find was a large Word document that refers to handouts. Am I missing something?
thanks,
Bonnie
I think this is a really good idea. :)
Have you seen the Scratch curriculum guide?