HI - end of the year, I have about 9 times to meet with 9Th grade classes. we have finished a preAP cs1.
I have been trying to comeup with lessons for Scratch - kind of a test drive for next year as an introduction to CS,
My questions for those who have used scratch with older kids - what did you do use as an introduction. How much did you let them figure out on their own?
any help would be much appreciated. I've been playing with Scratch on my own.
Offline
For introduction, we sometimes give a 5 minute show of the basic features of Scratch and some sample projects. Then, we let students explore Scratch on their own for around 20 minutes, then we show them again for 5-10 minutes some more advanced features that either came up during their free exploration or that we think are useful for what some of them are trying to do. The Scratch cards are an excellent way of showing some features with a specific purpose.
It all depends on the audience and the goals, there is no right or wrong approach. We would love to hear how your experience goes.
By the way, I am moving this post to the educators section of the forums.
Offline
thank you for your reply. I know these students - they are very computer savy - I want them to experiment but not copy. For the two days, I will hide the project folder. Then, we can look and continue. They have had random numbers and conditionals before so I am going in the direction of games.
Offline
I'm working with much younger students than yours (5th grade) but they have been teaching themselves by first modifying the programs in the projects folder and on the website. After messing around with 3-4 many of them set off on their own to create from scratch (no pun intended). Not copying, but really working things out on their own based on what they saw in other programs.
I would think your students have a better grasp of basic computer structures (I had to discuss loops, calls, etc...) so they should be able to pick what they need up on their own.
Offline