10 Ways I Tried To Enhance My Classroom This Year With Tech: #4 The Scratch Curriculum

#4 Using the Scratch Curriculum Draft Guide

This year ScratchEd published a Scratch Curriculum Draft for the Scratch programming language that was general enough that it could be adapted to almost any grade level. It's a handy tool, and has some great ideas. Here is a run-down:

Introduction Students are introduced to creative computing and Scratch, through sample projects and hands-on experiences.

Arts Students explore the arts by creating projects that include elements of music, design, drawing, and dance. The computational concepts of sequence and loops, and the computational practices of being iterative and incremental are highlighted.

Stories Students explore storytelling by creating projects that include characters, scenes, and narrative. The computational concepts of parallelism and events and the computational practices of reusing and remixing are highlighted.

Games Students explore games by creating projects that define goals and rules. The computational concepts of conditionals, operators, and data, and the computational practices of testing and debugging are highlighted.

What's noticeably missing is any math integration. It's absence seems unavoidable in a general all-grades document. Still, even though it's not really meant to do this, the document has helped me start thinking about how to integrate Scratch into other areas that I teach. So if you've thought about using Scratch in your classroom, but didn't know where to begin, the Scratch Curriculum Guide may be the perfect starting point.