Third graders at Holladay Elementary have been learning about food chains (SOL3.5), so today students in Ms. Whittaker’s class created an animated food chain using code in Scratch. First, we reviewed the different types of aquatic and terrestrial food chains, and we discussed how all food chains start with the sun. Next, I helped the students set up their Scratch accounts. We started a new project, deleted the cat sprite (the default character), and I showed them how to draw their own sprites. They drew a sun, a plant, an animal to eat the plant (an herbivore), and an animal to eat that animal (a carnivore). Since it was going to be animated, they also drew several costumes for each sprite. For example, their sun sprite had costumes showing the rays shining down on the plant, and their plant sprite had costumes showing how it was being eaten. Finally the students added code to each sprite. The sun code looped through the costumes so it repeatedly sent rays to the plant. The other sprites’ codes programed them to move and cycle through the costumes at different time intervals, making it look like they were eating and getting eaten. We shared our project links on Schoology, but you can see them all here.

Third graders at Trevvett Elementary have been learning about cycles (SOL3.8): the lunar cycle and plant and animal life cycles. Today students in Ms. Smith’s class used basic coding skills to create animated diagrams of a cycle of their choosing. First we went to the Scratch website and created an account. Scratch is a programing language developed by MIT to teach children about coding. We started a new project and clicked the Stage button. Then we clicked the paint brush icon to create a new stage. The students used the paint tools to draw a diagram of one of the cycles. Next we right clicked on the default sprite (the Scratch character) and deleted it. I showed the students how to choose a new sprite from the sprite library. Now it was time to write some code. The students positioned their sprite where they wanted it to start. They chose “When the flag is clicked” Event to begin their code and added a “go to x-y” element from the Motion library. Then they added a “say _ for _ secs” element from the Looks library and typed the first step in the cycle. For each subsequent step, they moved their sprite to another part of the cycle, added a “glide 1 secs to x-y” Motion element and a “say _ for _ secs” Looks element until all the parts were identified. Testing the code is the most important part and provides an excellent opportunity for logical thinking and problem solving when the animation doesn’t work out as planned. When the students’ projects finally worked, they pressed the “Share” button and pasted the links to Schoology. You can see all their projects here (be sure to press the “See inside” button to take a look at their coding).