Scratch: Lesson 4: Making a Scary Movie

This week in Scratch we created scary stories/movies. In order to do this, we combined what we have learned so far in our Scratch lessons with two new skills: how to make a character glide and how to move a character to a specific place on the stage.

PowerPoint Used in the Lesson:

Scratch Lesson 4: Create a Scary Movie_primaryschoollessons from SeniorInfants

Note: This PowerPoint can be downloaded for free by signing into Slideshare.

Steps Involved in Teaching this Lesson:

1. I began the lesson by using the PowerPoint above to explain how the stage area is similar to a grid made up of an x and y axis (just like in Maths - you can learn more about this here). This skill of being able to name a location using the axes is a skill that they will find useful not only in Scratch but also when they move on to more professional programming software. To make this process simpler for beginners, Scratch does not require the child to work out the location themselves but will tell you the name of the location when you hover your mouse over an area of the stage. I demonstrated this for them and allowed them to check it out also.

2. After we had discussed this in detail, we learned how to make our character glide to a specific place on the stage by watching the second half of this Scratch tutorial.

3. The class were then given a few minutes to see if they could get their sprite to move to two different, specified places on the stage, just like the video showed us. I had to be very clear on my expectations for this activity: it wasn't about changing the background or exploring the different characters, but about showing me they could move their sprite to a specific place. I had to keep emphasizing that they would have time at the end of the session to explore new things.

4. Once they had finished this, we quickly revised how to add music to a project (this can be difficult to remember as it involves changing the tab from 'Scripts' to 'Sounds'). I gave them another few minutes to add music to their gliding 'practice' projects.

5. When they had shown me that they could successfully complete these skills, I showed them this week's challenge: to create a scary movie.

Note: In the challenge I asked them to see could they make their character disappear. This resulted in many of them wondering how to get it back. In order to do this, they need to drag out the 'show' block (from 'Looks'), click on it and then remove it again.

6. When they had saved their projects, they were allowed some free play time. The lesson took 40-60 minutes to complete.

Other Scratch Lesson Ideas: 
If you missed my previous Scratch posts, you can find them linked below:

Lesson 1: What is Coding?

Lesson 2: Creating Our First Story

Lesson 3: Create A Music Video

Don't forget to leave a comment to let me know how you get on with this lesson!

Thematic Unit for Infants: St. Valentine's Day Activities

Children love having 'themed' days in school and Valentine's Day offers a brilliant opportunity to teach a wide range of subjects based on one theme.

This week, I am re-blogging a few lesson ideas I tried out with my Senior Infant class on Valentine's Day a couple of years ago. I hope you find them useful!

English: Creative Writing/Reading

I made out a big card for the class with the word 'love' on the front in a heart. I left it out on the morning of Valentine's Day and told the children that it had arrived in the post for them. First of all, we predicted what might be inside the card. We then opened it up and played a game of I Spy. We spied words with capital letters, words starting with ___, the word love, etc. We then read the card together. Following this, I covered the words on the card with blank sheets of paper. We had to match some words written on flashcards to the card, where they were missing/covered. We wrote a new card as if we were writing it to Mammy and Daddy, as a class (LEA). They children then created their own cards using our class card as an example (To ___, I love you. Love Mary.) 

English: Sight Word: Love

We learned this song during the week leading up to Valentine's day:

                        
We also used the word in our writing and read stories with the word in it (e.g. I Love You as Big as the World).

Maths: Counting to 20 and Estimation
I gave the children little bags of sweets and they had to estimate how many sweets were in the bag. We then counted them all together emphasising moving them to one side as they were counted. When we counted 20 sweets, I asked them to eat one and tell me how many they think they have left and then to check this number. I then got them to make me little groups of sweets: 3, 5, 10, 15, etc.

I handed out a template containing various heart shapes (see below). We looked at each heart on the IWB and talked about how many sweets they thought would fit into each heart size. We noted them beside the hearts on the IWB. They had to test how many sweets would fit into each heart after this and they wrote the number underneath the heart. We compared answers with estimates.

Art: Jim Dine Hearts:

We looked at some examples of Jim Dine's heart art and talked about the colours he used. We discussed words to describe the marks he used and the shapes of the colour blocks. They drew a big heart on a piece of paper. They coloured inside the heart with warm colours (using similar shapes) and outside the heart with cool colours. They then painted the pictures with a little olive oil to create a stained glass effect. I blotted them before leaving them to dry. When they had dried I added black paper borders (using mounting paper that I had measured and cut into a border with a blade). I rolled them up and tied them with a ribbon. I attached a little heart shaped pink notelet to the ribbon on which they wrote a message (to their Mum or Dad). Note: This lesson was completed earlier in the week so they could be brought home for Valentine's Day. 

Religion/History: The Story of St. Valentine
We looked at this video and talked about it afterwards. They each recreated a scene from the story on a piece of paper. I selected some pictures to display alongside sentences I had written about the story, on the wall.

Geography: Italy
While I did not teach a lesson on Italy (I had already covered some aspects of Italian culture under another topic), this would be a nice geography lesson to teach on a Valentine's themed day, especially you try to link it to the story of St. Valentine.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Scratch Computer Programming: Lesson 3

Unfortunately as I have been spending a lot of time preparing for my Parent Teacher Meetings this week, our coding lesson was short and sweet!

So far they have learned all about what coding is and how to create their first short story.

This week we learned how to create a simple music video. We began by discussing what they had learned last week and something that 'stuck with them' from the lesson.

They then went on to complete this week's 'Dancing Character' challenge.

Here is the PowerPoint I used in the lesson:

 

Lesson 3: Dancing Character_PrimarySchoolLessons from SeniorInfants

You can download the PowerPoint here and you can find the dance tutorial here.

This lesson was their first experience of incorporating two 'blocks' of script into their program that would run simultaneously when they clicked the flag. Most of them found this quite simple and needed very little further direction from me during the lesson.

Don't forget to check out Lesson 1 and Lesson 2 if you haven't already, and best of luck with lesson 3!