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Lesson Plan: "Are You Ready to Scratch?"

Contributed by Ashley Lee, November 11, 2009
A lesson plan that turns kids to programmers in a matter of minutes!
  • Original Author: Amy Wong, The KCI's Merit Program
  • Education Level: Preschool and Kindergarten, Elementary School, Middle School, High School, College and University, Professional Development, Other
  • Content Types: Activity, Lesson Plan, Sample Scratch Project, Website
  • Curricular Areas: Computer Science, Engineering, Language Arts, Mathematics, Music, Science, Social Studies, Teacher Education, Technology, Visual Arts, Other
  • Keywords: beginner, overview, introduction, getting started

The following lesson plan was written by Amy Wong at the KCI's Merit Program. This lesson aims to introduce kids to Scratch in one hour. As Amy suggests, Scratch can be used to teach a wide range of subjects (e.g. storytelling, math, languages, etc.).

 

Are you ready to Scratch?

Time: 1 hour



15 min: Overview and Setup

  1. Go to http://scratch.mit.edu/ and click to download Scratch. Filling out the form before downloading is optional.  Double-click on the downloaded file and follow the instructions to install.
  2. Once you've installed Scratch, we'll go through step by step on a quick animation to get you started.  Then you're free to explore!
Link to presentation: http://prezi.com/125965/

How can this fit into my classroom?
 
Let's take a standard for example.  According to the 8th grade science standards, requirement (4e) states that:

Students know the appearance, general composition, relative position and size, and motion of objects in the solar system, including planets, planetary satellites, comets, and asteroids. 

How might you have students understand this by using Scratch?

How about another example?  Let's say you are having the students learn about US Presidents.  You could create an interactive game to have them create their own quiz and have their peers play each other's games/quizzes:
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/yogamamajules/46515.  Okay, so maybe this isn't the best example of a quiz, but you get the idea.

Other examples:

Games
    Donkey Kong: http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/Deweybears/20922
Storytelling
    Food Chain: http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/Graham/851
Math
    Spirographs: http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/ksims/14966
    Trigrams: http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/DrSuper/267434
Languages
    Portuguese: http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/ffred/404765
 
10 min: Walk through a Quick Example
 
30 min: Build your own Scratch program in 30 minutes or less!
  • Theme: It's summer time! Create an animation, story, or game using the theme of summer.  To get you familiar with all the different functionality, try to include at least:
    • At least two sprites that move around the page
    • A variable such as a score counter
    • Add a sound
  • Check out Amy's silly sample: amy_beach.sb.
  • Extra Credit: Add sound, either recorded yourself or from a sound clip.
  • Extra EXTRA Credit: Add some people and have them talk to each other with word bubbles
10 min: Wrap-Up and Conclusion
  1. Wrap-up Scratch and what you learned:
    • What did you think of the experience?  Was it difficult to learn?  What are some of the challenges?
    • If you've had experience with programming before, how does this compare?
    • How might you envision using this in your classroom?
  2. Check out the Pico Board, a way for students to take Scratch a step further by using environmental sensors to interact with Scratch.
 
Resource Files
application/octet-stream iconsample program
application/octet-stream iconsample program
Links: 
Lesson plan
Presentation slides (for teachers)