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!

Grade 6: First Computer Science Lesson

In our first class, students will share their past computer programming experience, and we will discuss possible goals and projects for the term.

To introduce coding, students will start Course 2 at code.org.

The login screen for Course 2 can be found at: studio.code.org/sections/MDTJGA


Students with extensive computer programming experience may start directly on Course 3, which can be found at: studio.code.org/sections/OTHKTT

Installing Scratch 2.0 Offline

Students in the Grade 5/6 class are required to install the Scratch 2.0 Offline editor on their computers. For step-by-step instructions, please see http://scratch.mit.edu/scratch2download/.

Grade 4: January Lessons

In January, Grade 4 students started off by creating their very own Maze game in Scratch. The logic and control for this game is simple once you know it, but getting their was sometimes challenging! Also, unexpected tricks, like not having a Sprite centred in the design space created some confusing bugs.

Next, students practised using the "broadcast" and "when I receive" blocks in Scratch to tell a simple story using conversation between two (or usually more!) characters.

Then, students started work on a Choose Your Own Adventure story, where the reader was asked to provide input (from they keyboard, while the program is running) to decide how the story will end.