This guide is a collection of ideas, strategies, and activities for an introductory creative computing experience using the Scratch programming language. The activities are designed to support familiarity and increasing fluency with computational creativity and computational thinking. In particular, the activities encourage exploration of key computational thinking concepts (sequence, loops, parallelism, events, conditionals, operators, data) and key computational thinking practices (experimenting and iterating, testing and debugging, reusing and remixing, abstracting and modularizing). Learn more about computational thinking – what it is and how to assess its development in learners – from resources in the appendix or by visiting http://scratched.gse.harvard.edu/ct

Inspired by constructionist approaches to learning, the activities in this guide emphasize the following principles:

No matter your current context or prior experience, this guide was designed with a wide range of learners and educators in mind. Here are a few examples of who might use the guide and how they might use it:

K-12 Teacher

Scratch is being used in thousands of elementary, middle-school, and high-school classrooms around the world. The guide can be used in its entirety as a semester-long computing course, or selectively as part of other curricular areas. Many educators introduce creative computing as an after-school or lunch-time program, using the activities as inspiration and scaffolding for students’ open-ended explorations.

Museum or Library Educator

In addition to formal learning environments like classrooms, Scratch has been used in informal learning spaces like museums and libraries. Whether as a structured workshop experience or a drop-in play space, these learning environments are ideal for supporting explorations in creative computing, without some of the restrictions present in traditional settings.

Young Learner

Over the past seven years since Scratch’s launch, young learners have been passionate advocates for creative computing in a variety of settings. From introducing their parents and teachers to programming, to creating learning opportunities for their peers, creative computing can be something that is done with them or by them, rather than just for them.

Parent

Parents can use the guide in a wide range of ways. From supporting homeschooling activities, to starting creative computing clubs at school, to hosting workshops at local community centers, parents are encouraged to think about how to use the guide to support the creative computing experiences of young learners.

College Instructor

Scratch can serve as an introduction to fundamental computational concepts and practices, often followed by a transition to more traditional text-based programming languages in computer science courses. For example, the CS50 course at Harvard University uses Scratch as an introductory programming experience before transitioning to the C programming language. The activities have also been used as part of education, art, and media literacy courses at the college level.

This guide is organized in seven units — from an initial preparatory unit to a culminating project-based unit — with each unit typically including six activities. A summary of each unit follows:

Unit 1 - Getting Started & Exploring

Prepare for the culture of creative computing by exploring possibilities and setting up technical infrastructure (e.g., creating Scratch accounts, starting design journals) and social infrastructure (e.g., establishing critique groups). Dive into an initial creative experience by making something “surprising” happen to a Scratch character.

Get comfortable with the key computational concept of sequence through a series of activities that provide varying levels of structure – from a step-by-step tutorial, to a creative challenge using a limited number of blocks, to open-ended explorations through making a project about yourself.

Unit 2 - Animations

Play with visuals and audio in these activities focused on animation, art, and music. Explore Scratch’s focus on media – and the key computational concepts of loops, events, and parallelism – by building your own band, designing animated creatures, and creating a music video for a favorite song.

Unit 3 - Stories

Create new interactive worlds through collaborative storytelling. Begin by developing characters, learning to code conversations, and then situating those characters and conversations in shifting scenes. Combine characters, conversations, and scenes in a larger story project that is passed along to other creators to further develop – and possibly reimagine entirely!

Unit 4 - Games

Create new interactive worlds through collaborative storytelling. Begin by developing characters, learning to code conversations, and then situating those characters and conversations in shifting scenes. Combine characters, conversations, and scenes in a larger story project that is passed along to other creators to further develop – and possibly reimagine entirely!