Quarter 1 Scratch Studios

For our final Scratch project students worked on musical compositions. Their work included classics like Baby Shark, Twinkle Twinkle, some Van Halen and I was even Rick Rolled. No prior music reading was required. The kids worked at their own ability level and I'm so proud of the work they have done. Some students with a musical background collaborated on pieces so that they could each build the music for their instrument and put them together into an ensemble. Others who finished early added animations and more. They are all AH-MAZING! 

At the culmination of our music project students were asked to choose their favorite of the 4 projects introduced in class. Click the links below to see what they added to their class studio. 

Green	Pink	Yellow

Using Variables

Counter Variables 

Our seventh graders have been busy exploring Scratch. Those fairly new to Scratch worked on simple clicker games to get started. Clicking as fast as they could on a Sprite trying to bet their high score before the countdown timer made it to zero. They started with some basics and if time allowed included some enhancements. Other, more veteran Scratchers opted to build alternative games with other challenges like collecting objects or adding levels of play. 

Check out some student examples that they shared below.

Abstraction, Algorithms, & Lego Sculptures

Students worked together on an unplugged activity in which a "robot" would select from a variety of legos to build a structure on a thick-green 8x16 lego baseplate. Each team member picked at least 1 brick, placed it, wrote a line of code to move it, and also tested and debugged it. Teams rotated through this process until every student had an opportunity to complete each task at least one time. If time allowed they were encouraged to add more bricks to their sculpture. Using binary code we broke down the lego brick description as follows.

We started with a review of binary code to to identify how many bits were needed to identify the assortment of colors we were using, as well as the height, width, and length. Bits were carefully placed in a pre-determined order so the robot could communicate their intentions with the group, see the images below. Our sets of lego bricks include 7 colors so we needed 3 bits to represent each color. In the end we needed 12 bits or 3 nibbles to represent the bricks in our kit. 

Next students used more abstraction to create a symbolic language to help the "robot" grab a brick, move it, and place it before retracting its arm and repeating the process. One student suggested calling the language they created Legottoson. It was interesting to see some overlap of the symbols as well as some differences. We stressed the importance of using abstractions that make sense. We could have used anything really, like pumpkins or squirrels, instead of arrows. 

Finally, students swapped and executed each others code to see if they could replicate each others sculptures. They identified any known errors along the way and after the "Big Reveal," see below. When pictures of the original sculptures were shown on the projector screen they attempted to identify, debug, and fix any mistakes. We continued to discuss the importance of a common language, that mistakes are OKAY and normal, and that finding the mistakes to fix them was part of the fun of coding.

An example of the original code with debugging and some students at work. 

Who Am I?

Students expand their knowledge of Google Slides, file types, and file management to create imagery including avatars of themselves. They also explored hex code to color their skin tones and hair. Below are some examples of their work, or as I like to call them digiforms. 

To get started with our Google Slides getting to know you activity they first learned about the polyline and the curve tool. Later they explored features found under Arrange on the menu bar to help organize and maneuver the objects in their file. 

While exploring these tools and adding the use of the grouping tool they created either a snowflake or a flower. The spent most of their time building a snowflake point or a flower petal, adding details then grouping these parts together. Next they duplicated these parts and used the rotation tool to build a symmetric creation. 

After working with these tools they were tasked with working independently to build an avatar of themselves using hex codes to match their skin tones. We had an opportunity to discuss file management and naming conventions as they downloaded these files with transparent backgrounds as png files.  They are a talented bunch and you’re gonna be amazed by some of the beautiful creations they’ve made. Here are the png files from grade seven. Our seventh graders will use their creations as Sprites in Scratch projects.