Scratch Logo, courtesy of MIT Media LabLiteracy from Scratch

Materials by Teachers in English - Primary

Biology: The Human Body (Raheema Janmohamed)

Project

Human BiologyMy project addresses part of the Sc2 primary science curriculum “Life Processes and Living things”. Lily needs help with her homework to label a human body.

Age range of audience: KS1-year 2. The vocabulary may not be accessible to children of a younger age; however the vocabulary could be adapted for all abilities. This could also be used as an example for children in KS2 for them to use to develop a Scratch file for KS1.

Description of the project

I started this Specialism hoping to understand ways in which to teach children how to programme in line with Michael Gove’s changes in the I.C.T. curriculum and how Scratch could aid the teaching of this. This Specialism has helped me to realise that this is possible with the way the program is laid out and the commands that are available to use. I believe that Scratch is an exciting and useful tool for teachers to use and with the right training and a small amount of creativity lessons can be extremely engaging for the children.

During the first week of using Scratch it became very clear that the software has a lot of potential to enrich the current curriculum as it is very simple version of programming for the children to use. Moreover, children would not even realise that this is what they are learning to do as the software is very colourful and has endless possibilities incorporated within it.

My Scratch project can be used in many different ways including as a plenary at the end of a lesson or as a basic teaching tool to support a science lesson on the human body. I feel that my project progressed very well and at a good pace since the first session. It was very easy to grasp the basics of the project and to identify what Scratch was capable of. During the various plenaries we had as an enhancement group I picked up various tricks that others had discovered.

I believe I have managed to create a presentation, which is engaging for the viewer and has a solid science background thus consolidating the learning that has taken place during that lesson.

What went well:

  1. I managed to decide on a topic straight away as I have a strong science background thus did not waste time creating a concept and an idea for the project.
  2. The manipulation of the Sprites was fairly easy to do and once you have an understanding of which part of the software controls what this can be done relatively quickly.
  3. Creating Backgrounds was extremely easy to achieve and creates a story for the children to follow.
  4. Creating Sprites allows creativity to flow within a child (or teacher) and this can be done using paint and drawing your own sprite, using a clip art from the internet or using a sprite available on the Scratch website.
  5. Duplication of coding allowed the time available to be used in a much more productive way as you do not have to continuously write the same coding if you want your characters to do the same thing.

Difficulties:

  1. Having to watch your project from the beginning. Currently there is no way around this. If you wanted to check that something works if you have adjusted something in the middle of a piece of coding you have to watch it from the beginning of this piece of coding. This can get very frustrating especially if your piece of work is a very long one.
  2. If you wanted to watch the project from the beginning the backgrounds would not always change back to the first background you have set. Thus you needed to click the correct background that you had started on.
  3. Moving the characters to the correct places. This is done using coordinates and can be difficult and time consuming. This required a lot of patience and perseverance on my part.

Scratch is definitely something that I would incorporate into schools and I envision that children in Year 1 could benefit from using this software. Scratch allows children to be as creative as they can be if it is being used to create an animation project and Scratch is also a useful teaching tool for any lesson and offers itself to be used for a cross-curricular way. In hindsight I would improve my project by adding in sound to keep the children engaged as the project develops.

Notes from the Course Tutor

These files are for use in the classroom. They can, of course, be adapted by teachers, with further resources, such as Sprites or Backgrounds, added by pupils.

I have included all the work of my teaching group here. There are many wonderful teaching ideas, and if we did not solve every coding problem effectively (none of us is an expert in Computing, including me!), the creativity of these young teachers more than makes up for it.

The teaching programme covered 30 hours of work at the computer, so if you start with one session of 60 minutes per week, you will become as proficient as they have been well before the end of your teaching year!

The key to success is to work with a partner, share ideas, and problem-solve together.

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