Grade 3: February 11, Caribou Contest

On February 11, students wrote the Caribou Math Contest. Although this is a split 2-3 class, everyone wrote the contest for grades 3-4. Students can use their assigned access code to sign in to the Caribou web page to check their results. (If the access code got lost, results will be available in class.)

This was the first time we had participated in this contest, and it was a learning experience for all. There are two more Caribou contests this school year. Every week from now on, we will take some class time to practice for future contests.

Grade 6: February 11 Caribou Contest

On February 11, students wrote the Caribou Math Contest for Grades 5-6. Students can use their assigned access code to sign in to the Caribou web page to check their results. (If the access code got lost, results will be available in class.)

This was the first time we had participated in this contest, and it was a learning experience for all. There are two more Caribou contests this school year, and we will take time each class to practise for the upcoming contests.

Grade 6: February 4, A Simple Touch or Avoid Game

This week, as a class, we worked through the creation of a simple Touch or Avoid game - the mouse had to get to the cake without being hit by the bats (or whatever other characters were chosen!). Students were introduced to some of the advanced control blocks in Scratch ("if touching?" block), and used the built in timer feature.

At the end of class, we had just enough time to see a MaKey MaKey in action. This neat little piece of technology allowed us to use a potato, banana and an apple to control a Scratch project I had provided that featured singing fruits and vegetables.

Grade 3: Fingerspelling ScratchJr Projects

As the "Sounds of Silence" unit of inquiry was wrapping up, students were asked if they new any American Sign Language. Some remembered using sign language as babies, and we practised a few simple signs. Everyone then practised the finger spelling alphabet.

Using the ScratchJr feature of including photos in characters, students then created projects that featured photos letters of their name, or another favourite phrase, formed in finger spelling. Great work!

February 9 Grade 1: Basketball

As students have started a new Unit of Inquiry "Play and Learn" we talked about the inventor of basketball, Dr. James Naismith, and about the first basketball game. We even learned that when Mme Nora was a girl, one of her high school teachers was Dr. Naismith's grandson!

Students then learned about concurrency in computer programming and made a ScratchJr project that made the cat dribble the ball to the basket, which required to separate scripts to run simultaneously.

February 2, Grade 1: ScratchJr Dance

Today students created SratchJr projects in which two characters danced. We used two new blocks: "Start when bumped" and "Repeat forever". Excellent work all round!

Grade 1: ScratchJr Photo Sprites

Last class, the grade 1 students learned how to create a new Sprite in ScrachJr that included a photo. Every student then applied this new skill to create a Sprite that was a photo of their model animal made for their Habitats Unit of Inquiry. Excellent work all round!

Grade 3: Converstaions in Scratch

Last week, the grade 3 class made ScratchJr programs in which two (or more!) characters had conversations, where control was done using the "hi" and "wait" blocks. This week, students applied the same concepts in Scratch, using the "say XXX for X sec" and the "wait" block. Scratch allows the programmer more control over these types of conversations because the exact length of time the dialogue is displayed is specified (using the "say XXX for X sec" block).

Overall students created some excellent dialogues! Well done!

Grade 4: Final Computer Science Lesson

In our final lesson, students reviewed all of the Scratch programs they had written and chose the one they are most proud of to post on their e-portfolios. We then had a demo of a "Fruit Band" Scratch program, which uses a MaKey MaKey to allow us to use real bananas, apples and potatoes to control our program!