Scratch in Pre-algebra Class
I have been using Scratch for a couple years in an elementary school in St. Paul. For math, I teach 7th grade pre-algebra to a gifted/talented class of 6th graders. The curriculum at this level in our district (Holt Level 3 Math) tends to directly teach concepts without much open-ended problem solving. Scratch is full of potential for using the math we were studying to solve interesting problems. I'm interested in figuring out ways Scratch be used by kids to explore topics like probability, percentages, ratios and proportions, patterns and functions. Scratcher Dr. Super helped us with this and made some great demonstration projects such as the attached slope and intercept one. For kids, the programming has to be within reach of their patience and the available time.
I posted my beginning list of integration ideas on the resources tab. Coming up with ideas for geometry was relatively easy, but I am looking for help with other topics. For example, can anyone think of projects where kids use equations for a purpose other than graphing lines? Have you done projects directly exploring integers? I would love to hear from other math teachers towards adding to the collection.
Karen, We should combine your demo of Translation with my Translation project and allow students to draw any shape and then Transform it. Mybe we can come up with a lesson plan that helps them do this from scratch (pun intended) and have teams doing each piece and then combining them. If you are game we can do this look at Translation and let me know. This would be a good example of combining my vision of Scratch with yours and MIT's for math (link to project)