Scratch Club
I have a 6-week course on teaching children software programming, that you,
are welcome to use in your own course. It includes a presentation (in
OpenOffice format) as well as some Zip file of supporting material.
I also try to show the students what is possible by beginning with one of
my own projects.
You can see the end results of these lessons on my Scratch project page.
Lesson 1 - Introduction
This is essentially similar to the Getting Started guide that comes with Scratch.
The project is to build a "Puppet Show" with a couple of sprites telling each
other a joke.
Lesson 2 - Graphics
This lesson first begins with a discussion of pixels and how to make artwork.
It then goes over animation and coordinate geometry (in order to show them
how to move their artwork.
The project is to take an picture of an elephant and animate so that it walks.
Lesson 3 - Messages
This lesson teaches the children event processing and synchronization issues.
Message passing is a critical part in Scratch, but it is pretty simple to use.
The supporting material includes a "Potato Face" where clicking buttons
changes the face parts on the potato.
If there is time, I teach them about the broadcast and wait block and use
it like a function routine to get our walking elephant (from the previous
lesson) to walk up and over a hill.
Lesson 4 - Music
This lesson uses the broadcast messages from the previous lesson and teaches
the kids how to get a choir of snails to sing "Hot Cross Buns".
Lesson 5 - Variables
This lessons teaches the children about variables, holding states, and doing
math and conditions.
We begin with an "Angry Baker" project that has a man that gets mad with the
more cupcakes are eaten. The baker "counts" using a variable.
This is a simple project, and I often show them a harder project… like building
a Pokemon battle game or Rock, Paper, Scissors.
Lesson 6 - Sensors and Games
We've now covered all of the concepts, and the last class is me walking the
students through building a racing game.
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