At Friends, third graders study the layers of the ocean and the creatures that inhabit each one. In Tech, students learn about the different types of commands in MIT’s programming language Scratch. Using Scratch, they start creating backgrounds, sprites, and code to make these elements interactive. This year, a new Scratch project helped students learn to program while it reinforced their understanding of ocean life.
Toward the beginning of the activity, I used Google Drive to share a Scratch file with my students. In it, the layers of the ocean are clickable.
Then the students did their part.
With markers and pencils, computer graphics programs or from within the Scratch interface itself, students drew sea life. No clip art was allowed! Those who used pencils and markers or a graphics program like Pixie learned how to turn their pictures into codable Scratch sprites.
The next step was coding the spites so that they hid at the beginning and only appeared when the appropriate layer was clicked upon. Once they coded the ocean life to appear, many students programmed their creatures to swim across the screen.
Finally, students chose their favorite ocean sprites, using the school Google Drive account to share them with me, and then I, in turn am using Drive to share the third graders’ sprites back to the whole class so that they can include some their peers’ sprites in their own ocean life project.
The code that makes the fish move comes along with the image, so it can happily swim in a another student’s project.
If you would like to look at your third grader’s ocean life Scratch project, first download Scratch 1.4 from the Scratch website. Then you and your child can sign into your child’s Google Drive account. Download the Scratch file and open it up into Scratch. If you have any with any of the steps necessary to see the project at home, you can email me at jseidel@friendsseminary.og.
Happy swimming!