This blog post was written by middle school technology, math, and science teacher Tom Jenkins who is also a Teacher Leader for the Middle School Portal 2: Math & Science Pathways social network.

If you were to have walked into my classroom today, you would have seen preteens creating cartoons or even their own videogames. How is this possible? Computer programming is difficult and can only be accomplished by those with specialized training. Certainly, not a 12 year old with several learning disabilities. It is possible with a program called Scratch.

Scratch is a project of Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab. It was originally developed with the help of the NSF and is now supported by Microsoft, Intel, Nokia, and Portugal Telecom. Its community has grown to over a quarter of a million contributors of all ages across the globe.

So…….How do I use it in my class?

I use it with all 600+ students (grades 5-8) that I see throughout the course of the school year. I use it to teach computer programming, mathematics, science, language arts, and even social studies. Most importantly, Scratch allows me to teach students that are labeled “MH” and “Gifted” at the same time and in the same classroom.

The purpose of this blog is to demonstrate specific examples of how I utilize this free software in each of the aforementioned settings and then also provide you with links to communities and tutorials that will help guide your hand through this incredible resource.

First and foremost, computer programming may seem out of the reach of some who think of it as being a mishmash of 1’s and 0’s. With Scratch this isn’t the case at all. To program, one uses color coded tabs and pulls them over to a script.

Please take notice of the orange tabs on the left. These are “Control” blocks. There are also color coded blocks for “Motion,” “Looks,” “Sounds,” “Pen,” “Sensing,” “Numbers,” and “Variables.” Programming is accomplished by dragging and dropping the desired blocks over into the script (the middle gray section of the screen).

The blocks are clearly labeled and can easily be swapped with another if the desired effect isn’t achieved by the student’s placement.

Math is a natural fit with endless possibilities when teaching with Scratch. Time, percentages, and variables barely scratch the surface of the concepts that can be taught through this program. One can even turn the “Background” into a giant Coordinate Plane to help demonstration motion along the X and Y Axes.

In my Science classes, I have used Scratch to show Newton’s Laws of Motion. Students were broken off into teams and told to create an animation or a video game that demonstrated one or more laws. The only catch was that end result had to correctly reflect the mathematics behind the physics. The combination of hundreds of objects (Sprites) along with simple action/reaction types of commands allowed the students to not only demonstrate their understanding of the topic, but they were also very entertaining as well.

Although this site is primarily meant to contain STEM type resources, I have also decided to include brief ideas for Language Arts and History for those of us that teach several subjects. Storyboarding, alternate endings, and punctuation (using the “think” and “say” tabs) would be a few of the concepts that would be perfectly suited for this application. On the other hand, I helped our history teacher improve an already existing project thanks to Scratch. He would have students draw and color posters to prove their understanding of events that precipitated the Revolutionary War. Now rather than hanging colored penciled drawings around the classroom to share, they presented their animated cartoons to the entire class.

Finally, differentiated learning - I can think of few things that are better suited for different styles/levels when compared to Scratch. The majority of the labels in the program are simple and easy to understand. The few ideas that may seem complex can be learned through experimentation without any consequences. If you don’t know what something will do or if you can’t read it……..Plug it into the script see the reaction. If you like it, keep it! If not, take it out of your script and try something else. In our building, I have suggested Scratch for enrichment of gifted students. One example: While other 5th grade students were working on the basics of renewable energy sources, a few students created an animation that showed how energy from the Sun is turned into electricity and then they shared that with the entire class.

Cool Stuff!

I’ve included these links for those that would like to learn more about Scratch:

Download or Explore the Scratch Homepage

Learnscratch.org

If you have any comments, suggestions, or awesome ideas please add a reply. Thanks