Towards a theory of teaching Scratch

Scratch has been the most challenging but also the most enjoyable activity of all last term’s Sugar Activities. The kids were excited to make animations and get them running, but unable to think of and figure out different animations apart from the ones I used to teach them as samples for demo. They only mastered the samples but no ideas of how to either improve them or creating animations similar but different from the samples.

A combination of building ‘blocks’ to guide two ‘sprites’, a fox and a rabbit

The reason for this would be a suggestion that the kids did not know what the different building blocks do and how they could combine them to make their own animation.

Sugar Lab’s Scratch Activity itself has the potential to convert kids to great thinkers and programmers and we have to get a way of making this happen.

I found these two things important while learning Python: Incremental development and composition are two basic things that are vital for empowering a new programmer.

I therefore found the best way of teaching Scratch is to have lesson plans with sessions that teach the different building blocks and what they do and, for each session, provide an exercise to help the student compose the building blocks to make an animation.

Three of the types of building ‘blocks’ that can be used in combination to program the sprites’ behaviour.

The exercise would work as a kind of explanation about what the sprite should do and challenges the kids to come up with the correct arrangement of the building blocks to make the the animation work. After learning more components, they can improve their animations by doing more complex exercises starting with the basic ones.

To help me do this, I have written a tutorial that has both demos on what the different
building blocks do and exercises from basic to complex ones that will empower the kids learning Scratch with every progress they make on the tutorial.

An example is that after teaching on things like the XY grid, and building blocks like, “go to X:0 Y:0”, “glide for 1 sec to X:0Y:0”, and teaching on simple control blocks like “when space pressed”. They could have an exercise like:

Make an animation that starts from the left bottom part of the stage, glides to the top right of the stage and falls to the bottom right of the stage. (Your animation should receive an input from the keyboard to initialize it.) 

 When the kids are able to make such an animation, then they will be able to use the above blocks with confidence, knowing what to expect. 

I found it an algorithm for teaching Scratch. More ideas and advice are welcome.

Thank you.

Simon Mwangangi

Judy’s Report 4: After the Holiday

Friday: Leparua Primary

I reported on Friday, last week, after the holiday.

Simon and I visited Leparua where we did a review of last term’s work with Scratch: We revisited the Motion and Control blocks. On this day, we continued with Motion and we taught the kids how to glide the sprite. We also had a chance to show the pupils how to import a stage xy-grid and they were able to do it.  They were able to move the mouse to a point on the grid and give the values of different points by reading the coordinate on the right side just bellow the xy-grid. Lastly, we gave them an assignment for them to complete in the coming week and the day was successful.

Post by Judy Kinya

Judy’s Report 3: Leaping Lemur

Monday: Ntugi Secondary

I went to Ntugi Secondary with Simon. He taught the Computer Club and I taught the Journalism Club. We used the XO’s camera to take the photos to add to FotoToon and to add comments on in the scene and the activity was successful.

Tuesday: Lewa Conservation Education Centre

In the morning, I went for a game drive with students from Ntugi Secondary together with their two teachers, Walter and Doreen. In the afternoon, the students did a written test which was set by Ephantus. After the test, I set up the OLPC laptops for the students and we introduced them to Leaping Lemur a game developed by Earth Rangers, an environmental organization based in Canada that is working with Lewa to promote conservation education.

Our Toronto team got it working on the XO so we can use it at the CEC.. The students from Ntugi Secondary were able to play the game and enjoyed it. The winners were awarded prizes and everything was successful.

Wednesday: Ntugi Secondary

At Ntugi Secondary, I taught a group of students how to take photos with the XO using the Record Activity. We succeeded and we were able to take pictures with thirteen laptops.

Thursday: Ntugi Secondary

Friday: Leparua Primary

I went to Leparua with Simon. We taught the pupils how to make variable score with Scratch. They imported two sprites, a gravity marble and cat. We taught the students to control them such that when the cat sprite touches the marble sprite, they all stop and change the score by one. And the lesson was successful 

Post by Judy Kinya

Simon’s Report 23: Another Week With the Visitors From UCC

Monday: Leparua Primary

For the next week we still had the visiting UCC group who were assisting in teaching, so we changed our daily schedule around a bit.

We went to Leparua Primary school and had two sessions. One was a class on Scratch where they learned to control the Sprite with the control keys. The second was a lesson up the hill where we could connect to Safaricom via the Cradlepoint and we had students learn about the Internet and, even thought we had some troubles connecting that day, the students were amazed of the many things they could learn by connecting.

Tuesday: Ntugi Secondary

We had the UCC group at Ntugi Secondary and they assisted with the teaching of Scratch. Because of the additional teachers, the Computer Club had an opportunity to learn much in a less time. I was able to get new members trained with the opportunity because there were enough personnel to train the new and the old members of the group at the same time. The students enjoyed it much.

Wednesday: Subuiga Primary

We went to Subuiga Primary school and we had a session with the kids where they learned to use the Tuxmath Activity, a really fun math game where you have to shoot down simple arithmetic problems by solving them and scoring points

At first, the students only wanted to play the simple levels, so they could get high scores, but with assistance and monitoring they advanced to more advanced levels.

Thursday: Ntugi Secondary

We had the UCC group at Ntugi help the students who are preparing to present their projects for the District Science Congress by helping them research on the Internet.

The XO machines, in combination with Internet access, were very useful for this purpose, giving the students an opportunity for wide research and also bringing confidence to their presentations. 

Friday: Leparua Primary

The UCC group had left and we were back on schedule with our visit to Leparua. The students had learned much and we gave them a challenge to figure out how they could create a game that would involve falling objects and they could have another sprite swallowing the falling objects controlled by the controller keys, score as you made that sprite swallow any object. They started working on it and they will finalise it on the coming Friday.

Post by Simon Mwangangi

Judy’s Report 2: Beginning Work On My Own As An Intern

Monday: Leparua Primary

We went at Leparua with Simon, the boys from UCC and their teacher Jeff. We had a session in the morning with the pupils and their teacher Doris. We taught them how to import two sprites and use sensing, sound and control blocs to instruct the sprites such that when the first sprite touches the second, they all stop and produce a sound.

In the afternoon we went up the hill. Our objective was to help the pupils to use the Internet in research but the machines failed to connect and therefore we didn’t achieve our objective.

Tuesday: Ntugi Secondary

At Ntugi Secondary we helped the students research their Science Congress projects. I later met with the Journalism Club to discuss the types of photos they should take for the scenes in their story.

Wednesday: Subuiga Primary

We went to Subuiga with the UCC boys and their two teachers, Jeff and Craig. In the afternoon, Simon and I taught the taught the Subuiga pupils the Typing Turtle Activity and, later, the UCC boys were in the field and played a football match with Subuiga boys.

Thursday: Ntugi Secondary/Lewa Conservation Education Centre

In the morning we were at Ntugi Secondary, with the UCC group, helping the Science Congress student groups to type their write-ups, but in the afternoon I went to the CEC to set up the XO’s for visiting students from Ntumburi Secondary and their teacher Mr Gikunda.

Friday: Leparua Primary

We went at Leparua with Simon and we taught the kids how to make a falling sprite ball in the Scratch Activity.     

Post by Judy Kinya