My experience of teaching children 8-10 years of programming on Scratch
I was going to write about it for a long time, but, a fashionable procrastination disease took up. The last straw was the post
“Teaching children to make games” from the Kodabra blog.
When his son Artem turned 7 years old and he went to school, we gave him a computer so that he would not lag behind life. For several months he played various games, enjoyed, enjoyed himself, etc. I felt a little sad that such an expensive and complicated device as a computer is used only for entertainment, and I decided to figure out how to use a computer for training. And what can you learn from the computer? Of course, programming! Then I drove the cherished phrase “teaching children to programming” into Yandex.
Scratch was not found immediately. I remember the feeling that I experienced when I first started the program: “Oh, it’s a pity that it wasn’t in my childhood”. I quickly ran through the blocks of Scratch, I highly appreciated its capabilities. For half an hour I poked him and, switching to Russian, called the child. After showing a few blocks, the child asked me to move a little, and continued on my own. Half an hour later, Kota's wild screams announced the apartment: “Wow, the child himself figured out the sounds,” I thought.
')
Artyom Scratch liked him; he spent several months with him for several hours a day. Projects flew like a machine gun, their number was close to a hundred pieces. An interesting point: the child did not want to recognize the variables. He believed that you can do without them, and spent a long time. I told him that variables are an important feature, but he did not believe. I had to write him a task that could not be solved without variables. In general, the entire first grade child was playing with Scratch and trying to talk about him at school. No one understood what he was talking about, and he felt hurt that he could not share his projects with anyone. I didn’t show the Internet to him then, and even then, when I showed him, he said that he wanted to communicate with real people, and not over the Internet.
I began to think how to solve this problem. The first thought was this: install the Scratch netbook in the classroom, show it to the teacher, let the children do the extensions. The teacher was not against. I taught Artyom to install Scratch from a flash drive; and so, one evening we went "for business". We installed it on 26 netbooks about 2 hours, were tired of the routine work, after which the son said that he did not want to be a system administrator.
Unfortunately, in the second grade on the extended day group, Scratch was never turned on ... Then I began to think further. It was starting to resemble the crocodile Gena, who was looking for friends for Cheburashka. In the cartoon, friends appeared when they started a common cause. We also decided to start a “business” - to organize the Scratch circle. The child already went to drawing in the youth club, to the director of which I turned.
Of course, there was no room, so we were offered to study in the music class on Sundays, when there are no classes. So, as I didn’t have experience in conducting a circle, in order to attract the maximum number of potential “friends”, the classes were made free. I remember the director’s suspicious gaze and the question: “Why do you need this?” I don’t remember what I was mumbling back, but decided to try. It remains to recruit people, for this were carried out the following activities:
- announcement on the stand in the club;
- advertising on a local forum;
- distribution before the start of the school advertising.
The search for textbooks suitable for primary school children gave nothing. Since there was no projector, I pre-printed each of three sheets each - blocks of scratch with descriptions.
The first lesson came 8 children of 7-10 years. We placed ourselves, started to install Scratch - Artem's skills in a high-speed installation of the program obtained at school were very useful here. Among the children who came, one girl, whose father is a programmer, already knew how to work in Scratch. She helped us show the guys how to move the blocks. After 15 minutes, everyone mastered the interface and began to do what is written in the leaves. As usual, in the first lesson there was a loud meow. But now something unimaginable was happening, at the same time 8 cats were screaming! Urgently studied on laptops volume down button. The lesson lasted 2 hours, the children were delighted. Read more about the enthusiasm can read at Kodabry. The main blocks were passed, and the children began to demand games. My explanations, that you need to wait a bit, and to study a few more blocks and the coordinate plane - were not accepted. At a joint meeting with Artem, it was decided to speed up the learning process, since all the children were smart. Initially, I planned to talk about the coordinates of approximately 5 lessons, but without the coordinates, neither the cartoon nor the game can be done. I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out that some children in the 2nd grade already knew what the coordinate plane was. With the words: “Dad explained to me” - the children immediately started using blocks with coordinates.
The game at the second lesson did not do, and made a cartoon.
To start, click on the green flag in the center of the screen.
At the second lesson came a few newcomers. I gave them the first lesson, the rest went through a cartoon. Having quickly made a cartoon, they began to modify it. We chose other characters, wrote different phrases, and everyone pretended that they understood what coordinates were. I noticed this in several sessions. Many people liked to make funny games, make fun and have fun, and so that I didn't bother with boring explanations, they said that they understand everything. In spite of all my efforts, some children did not fully understand the coordinates. By the way, those who did not understand the coordinates, after some time they threw the circle. Remained the backbone of intelligent students. The general statistics after three semesters of training is approximately the following: those who are engaged all this time, 10 people, is the backbone. A total of 40 people went to classes. Those who abandoned — visited about 10 lessons each, realized that they were not interested — and left.
It should be noted that I did not have enough imagination to invent a new lesson every week. This helped me Artem. It was enough for two semesters, and then I began to invent myself. It is very difficult, and children did not like all the lessons. Every class I ask the children to come up with the topic of the next class, for all the time they helped me 3-4 times. Recently, in search of inspiration, I often go to the site scratch.mit.edu, there are a lot of cool examples.
Following the pattern of Kodabra, I will try to formulate the rules of learning.
1. Every minute the child should be interested. If at least one is not interested, it includes an outside game, or a cartoon on the laptop, and the rest are drawn to it. If a child is bored, he can always be shown a new joke on Scratch, because this is a very deep and powerful program.
2. All suggestions of children to improve the games - at the end of classes. There is one boy, he does not want to do what he has written, but immediately begins to generate ideas. As a result, departs from the lesson plan. It makes its scripts. Nothing works for him, and he starts to distract me. And to understand another's code is not always easy, even if it was written by an 8 year old boy.
3. Always have on hand additional tasks. Some children are very intelligent, they immediately get everything, and the lessons lasted for 2 astronomical hours. If a child does everything in an hour, you need to give him something else interesting.
4. Classes longer than 1 astronomical hour should not be conducted. 40 min, as in school - optimal. Further, the concentration of children actually deteriorates and they begin to hooligan.
5. Take along water and cookies. Encouraging cookies really works. I was touched when this was confirmed in practice.
In the process of creating lessons, I constantly monitored the Internet in search of literature on Scrath. Unfortunately, the book of the distinguished Yevgeny Patarakin was not written for primary school, and I did not find other books in Russian. After the first half of the year, I had a lot of materials with lessons, and, together with Artyom, we decided to make a book. I wrote and took screenshots, of course, me. Artyom had all the ideas from the lessons, and a couple of stories about Theseus Kitten and the bat Rousettus aegyptiacus (which, as it turned out, carries the Ebola virus). So, how to publish a book is not cheap, it was decided to make it in electronic format epub. From this link you can download books and magazines about Scratch created from 2013 to 2016.
1. To show Artem that “not gods are burning pots”, that if there are no Scratch books in Russian for independent study by children of elementary grades, this can be corrected;
2. To help primary school students to independently deal with Scratch. Dad and mom should only download the book on the tablet, and then the child himself should make games;
3. Help other parents to organize circles of young programmers;
4. Find like-minded people engaged in teaching children Scratch and programming in general;
5. Advertise Scratch as a great way to learn. The maximum goal - every elementary school student should know about the existence of Scratch. Then the child himself will understand whether he likes it or not, but he should move the blocks at least once in his life.
1. At the book fair NonFiction 2013, where Artem and I conducted a master class on Scratch, he was given a badge - an exhibitor and we went into a room without a queue, which was 100 meters away. I have never seen such a proud expression. And then, at the master class, he shone with confidence, and with great pleasure showed all the Scratch kids;
2. The book is currently downloaded more than 4500 times in Russian and 1700 in English. There are some positive reviews. Hopefully, for some children, she really helped take the first steps in Scratch;
3. Several people wrote that they were planning to make Scratch mugs;
4. One very respected person even came to our class with his daughter to learn from the experience. He has also opened a circle in Moscow. On the Internet, more and more people come across with similar interests;
In the process of writing a book, it turned out that e-books can be sold. Since no one in our country will buy an e-book, it was decided to translate the book into English in order to test e-book distribution schemes.
Friends at Artyom added. Many of his class came to the circle, and, although abandoned, the child's authority grew. Despite the fact that he has now switched to minecraft, I sometimes ask him for advice on Scratch.
I really hope that in a few years in elementary school there will be the subject of “the basics of programming on Scratch”.
Here is another example of the game that Artem made.
upd 10/19/2016
Hooray!
My Scratch Programming Tutorial is finally published!
Scratch for young programmers.
Optimized for children 9-10 years.
Here is a piece of the book
http://ozon-st.cdn.ngenix.net/multimedia/1015649918.pdf
upd 09/22/2017
Much work has been done, and now the world's first Scratch and Arduino tutorial has appeared
with comics! Called "School of Captain Gramp". Especially for those who have mastered Scratch and want something more. You can get it here in the shop
This book and two more are published by Ridero Publishing House, and are available on Print On Demand technology.
Under these links, you can get acquainted with the first 20% of books.
The site of the book "School of Captain Gramp"
The site of the book "Scratch for teachers and parents."
The site of the book “Meet, this is Snap! Block programming environment more powerful Scratch »
Snap by the way! - this is a really powerful thing. The main difference from Scratch are the advanced features for building your own blocks, as well as lists and functions of the first class. These powerful features let you use Snap! not only in elementary school, but also for teaching high school students and students. I would very much like it to be widely used in our country.
upd 11/29/2017
Second Scratch Programming Tutorial published!
upd 05/18/2018
Starting from June 1, 2018 two powerful online courses
1. teaching children programming on Scratch
2. learning to program schoolchildren in minecraft
Details on educationforkids.online
upd 20th August 2018
New book released
Scratch and Arduino. 18 game projects for young programmers of microcontrollers
www.bhv.ru/books/book.php?id=200704
There are not all stores. Order on scratch4russia.com/store
And also I translated a couple of Italian books about programming on Scratch
" Video Games on Scratch " and " Animation on Scratch "
“Teaching children to make games” from the Kodabra blog.
Meet Scratch
When his son Artem turned 7 years old and he went to school, we gave him a computer so that he would not lag behind life. For several months he played various games, enjoyed, enjoyed himself, etc. I felt a little sad that such an expensive and complicated device as a computer is used only for entertainment, and I decided to figure out how to use a computer for training. And what can you learn from the computer? Of course, programming! Then I drove the cherished phrase “teaching children to programming” into Yandex.
Scratch was not found immediately. I remember the feeling that I experienced when I first started the program: “Oh, it’s a pity that it wasn’t in my childhood”. I quickly ran through the blocks of Scratch, I highly appreciated its capabilities. For half an hour I poked him and, switching to Russian, called the child. After showing a few blocks, the child asked me to move a little, and continued on my own. Half an hour later, Kota's wild screams announced the apartment: “Wow, the child himself figured out the sounds,” I thought.
')
Artyom Scratch liked him; he spent several months with him for several hours a day. Projects flew like a machine gun, their number was close to a hundred pieces. An interesting point: the child did not want to recognize the variables. He believed that you can do without them, and spent a long time. I told him that variables are an important feature, but he did not believe. I had to write him a task that could not be solved without variables. In general, the entire first grade child was playing with Scratch and trying to talk about him at school. No one understood what he was talking about, and he felt hurt that he could not share his projects with anyone. I didn’t show the Internet to him then, and even then, when I showed him, he said that he wanted to communicate with real people, and not over the Internet.
I began to think how to solve this problem. The first thought was this: install the Scratch netbook in the classroom, show it to the teacher, let the children do the extensions. The teacher was not against. I taught Artyom to install Scratch from a flash drive; and so, one evening we went "for business". We installed it on 26 netbooks about 2 hours, were tired of the routine work, after which the son said that he did not want to be a system administrator.
Organization of a circle of young programmers at Scratch
Unfortunately, in the second grade on the extended day group, Scratch was never turned on ... Then I began to think further. It was starting to resemble the crocodile Gena, who was looking for friends for Cheburashka. In the cartoon, friends appeared when they started a common cause. We also decided to start a “business” - to organize the Scratch circle. The child already went to drawing in the youth club, to the director of which I turned.
Of course, there was no room, so we were offered to study in the music class on Sundays, when there are no classes. So, as I didn’t have experience in conducting a circle, in order to attract the maximum number of potential “friends”, the classes were made free. I remember the director’s suspicious gaze and the question: “Why do you need this?” I don’t remember what I was mumbling back, but decided to try. It remains to recruit people, for this were carried out the following activities:
- announcement on the stand in the club;
- advertising on a local forum;
- distribution before the start of the school advertising.
The search for textbooks suitable for primary school children gave nothing. Since there was no projector, I pre-printed each of three sheets each - blocks of scratch with descriptions.
The first lesson came 8 children of 7-10 years. We placed ourselves, started to install Scratch - Artem's skills in a high-speed installation of the program obtained at school were very useful here. Among the children who came, one girl, whose father is a programmer, already knew how to work in Scratch. She helped us show the guys how to move the blocks. After 15 minutes, everyone mastered the interface and began to do what is written in the leaves. As usual, in the first lesson there was a loud meow. But now something unimaginable was happening, at the same time 8 cats were screaming! Urgently studied on laptops volume down button. The lesson lasted 2 hours, the children were delighted. Read more about the enthusiasm can read at Kodabry. The main blocks were passed, and the children began to demand games. My explanations, that you need to wait a bit, and to study a few more blocks and the coordinate plane - were not accepted. At a joint meeting with Artem, it was decided to speed up the learning process, since all the children were smart. Initially, I planned to talk about the coordinates of approximately 5 lessons, but without the coordinates, neither the cartoon nor the game can be done. I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out that some children in the 2nd grade already knew what the coordinate plane was. With the words: “Dad explained to me” - the children immediately started using blocks with coordinates.
The game at the second lesson did not do, and made a cartoon.
To start, click on the green flag in the center of the screen.
At the second lesson came a few newcomers. I gave them the first lesson, the rest went through a cartoon. Having quickly made a cartoon, they began to modify it. We chose other characters, wrote different phrases, and everyone pretended that they understood what coordinates were. I noticed this in several sessions. Many people liked to make funny games, make fun and have fun, and so that I didn't bother with boring explanations, they said that they understand everything. In spite of all my efforts, some children did not fully understand the coordinates. By the way, those who did not understand the coordinates, after some time they threw the circle. Remained the backbone of intelligent students. The general statistics after three semesters of training is approximately the following: those who are engaged all this time, 10 people, is the backbone. A total of 40 people went to classes. Those who abandoned — visited about 10 lessons each, realized that they were not interested — and left.
It should be noted that I did not have enough imagination to invent a new lesson every week. This helped me Artem. It was enough for two semesters, and then I began to invent myself. It is very difficult, and children did not like all the lessons. Every class I ask the children to come up with the topic of the next class, for all the time they helped me 3-4 times. Recently, in search of inspiration, I often go to the site scratch.mit.edu, there are a lot of cool examples.
Following the pattern of Kodabra, I will try to formulate the rules of learning.
1. Every minute the child should be interested. If at least one is not interested, it includes an outside game, or a cartoon on the laptop, and the rest are drawn to it. If a child is bored, he can always be shown a new joke on Scratch, because this is a very deep and powerful program.
2. All suggestions of children to improve the games - at the end of classes. There is one boy, he does not want to do what he has written, but immediately begins to generate ideas. As a result, departs from the lesson plan. It makes its scripts. Nothing works for him, and he starts to distract me. And to understand another's code is not always easy, even if it was written by an 8 year old boy.
3. Always have on hand additional tasks. Some children are very intelligent, they immediately get everything, and the lessons lasted for 2 astronomical hours. If a child does everything in an hour, you need to give him something else interesting.
4. Classes longer than 1 astronomical hour should not be conducted. 40 min, as in school - optimal. Further, the concentration of children actually deteriorates and they begin to hooligan.
5. Take along water and cookies. Encouraging cookies really works. I was touched when this was confirmed in practice.
Appearance of the book
In the process of creating lessons, I constantly monitored the Internet in search of literature on Scrath. Unfortunately, the book of the distinguished Yevgeny Patarakin was not written for primary school, and I did not find other books in Russian. After the first half of the year, I had a lot of materials with lessons, and, together with Artyom, we decided to make a book. I wrote and took screenshots, of course, me. Artyom had all the ideas from the lessons, and a couple of stories about Theseus Kitten and the bat Rousettus aegyptiacus (which, as it turned out, carries the Ebola virus). So, how to publish a book is not cheap, it was decided to make it in electronic format epub. From this link you can download books and magazines about Scratch created from 2013 to 2016.
Main goals of writing a book
1. To show Artem that “not gods are burning pots”, that if there are no Scratch books in Russian for independent study by children of elementary grades, this can be corrected;
2. To help primary school students to independently deal with Scratch. Dad and mom should only download the book on the tablet, and then the child himself should make games;
3. Help other parents to organize circles of young programmers;
4. Find like-minded people engaged in teaching children Scratch and programming in general;
5. Advertise Scratch as a great way to learn. The maximum goal - every elementary school student should know about the existence of Scratch. Then the child himself will understand whether he likes it or not, but he should move the blocks at least once in his life.
Result
1. At the book fair NonFiction 2013, where Artem and I conducted a master class on Scratch, he was given a badge - an exhibitor and we went into a room without a queue, which was 100 meters away. I have never seen such a proud expression. And then, at the master class, he shone with confidence, and with great pleasure showed all the Scratch kids;
2. The book is currently downloaded more than 4500 times in Russian and 1700 in English. There are some positive reviews. Hopefully, for some children, she really helped take the first steps in Scratch;
3. Several people wrote that they were planning to make Scratch mugs;
4. One very respected person even came to our class with his daughter to learn from the experience. He has also opened a circle in Moscow. On the Internet, more and more people come across with similar interests;
In the process of writing a book, it turned out that e-books can be sold. Since no one in our country will buy an e-book, it was decided to translate the book into English in order to test e-book distribution schemes.
Conclusion
Friends at Artyom added. Many of his class came to the circle, and, although abandoned, the child's authority grew. Despite the fact that he has now switched to minecraft, I sometimes ask him for advice on Scratch.
I really hope that in a few years in elementary school there will be the subject of “the basics of programming on Scratch”.
Here is another example of the game that Artem made.
upd 10/19/2016
Hooray!
My Scratch Programming Tutorial is finally published!
Scratch for young programmers.
Optimized for children 9-10 years.
Here is a piece of the book
http://ozon-st.cdn.ngenix.net/multimedia/1015649918.pdf
upd 09/22/2017
Much work has been done, and now the world's first Scratch and Arduino tutorial has appeared
with comics! Called "School of Captain Gramp". Especially for those who have mastered Scratch and want something more. You can get it here in the shop
This book and two more are published by Ridero Publishing House, and are available on Print On Demand technology.
Under these links, you can get acquainted with the first 20% of books.
The site of the book "School of Captain Gramp"
The site of the book "Scratch for teachers and parents."
The site of the book “Meet, this is Snap! Block programming environment more powerful Scratch »
Snap by the way! - this is a really powerful thing. The main difference from Scratch are the advanced features for building your own blocks, as well as lists and functions of the first class. These powerful features let you use Snap! not only in elementary school, but also for teaching high school students and students. I would very much like it to be widely used in our country.
upd 11/29/2017
Second Scratch Programming Tutorial published!
upd 05/18/2018
Starting from June 1, 2018 two powerful online courses
1. teaching children programming on Scratch
2. learning to program schoolchildren in minecraft
Details on educationforkids.online
upd 20th August 2018
New book released
Scratch and Arduino. 18 game projects for young programmers of microcontrollers
www.bhv.ru/books/book.php?id=200704
There are not all stores. Order on scratch4russia.com/store
And also I translated a couple of Italian books about programming on Scratch
" Video Games on Scratch " and " Animation on Scratch "
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/234823/
All Articles