The purpose of this unit is to build students’ knowledge and skills in the foundations of Computer Science (CS).  Students who were with us for Kindergarten and 1st Grade will have had exposure to CS through their work with the kid-friendly robot called the Beebot, where they explored the sequential nature of computer programs by programming the Beebot to move across number lines and rectangular arrays in specific ways to solve “challenges.”

This unit will build upon those experiences by teaching students how to link a sequence of commands into a program using the Scratch Jr app.  Students will learn how to use a variety of commands to move a character across a screen, followed by more advanced commands such as text bubbles, appearing/ disappearing, and multiple character interactions.  Along the way, students will be introduced to the concepts of “debugging” by being given erroneous command sequences to correct, and by correcting their own programs.

Next, students will be challenged to retell a story by creating an animation in Scratch Jr.

Finally, students will create an animation in Scratch Jr. that teaches a Science idea, in a BrainPop-style way.

In this Amplify unit, students have been advising the aquarium director with helping to answer young visitors’ questions about Spruce the Sea Turtle, who will soon be released back into the ocean. Now, the aquarium is partnering with the city zoo and wants to create a new after school program for kids where they use robots to tell the stories of survival of Spruce and other animals!

Earth is inhabited by a staggering variety of animals and plants, with incredible variation in size, shape, color and parts. How does each of these kinds of living things continue to survive? How do their offspring survive? What does their survival have to do with the nearly endless variation we observe among living things? All living things must meet their basic survival needs, including getting food, water, and oxygen, and avoiding being eaten by other animals. The body parts (structures) of animals and plants function in ways that enable living things to meet their survival needs. 

Students will be presented with a story about Spruce the Sea Turtle and a corresponding program that shows how Spruce meets his needs in his environment.  Understanding how structures help organisms and their offspring meet survival needs serves as a foundation for future learning about adaptations, inheritance, genetics, natural selection, and evolution.  As students are presented with additional survival stories and programming practice, they will grow their scientific understanding, narrative storytelling skills, and programming expertise as they tackle more and more complex problems. 

Then using their knowledge of science, computer science, and elements of storytelling, students will research other animals and write a story and program a path that shows and tells about a new organisms life in its environment. 

How can you design a mixture for a certain purpose? For centuries, humans have undertaken this challenge. From the creation of medicines, paints, and building materials, to the development of cleaning products, adhesives, and foods, mixtures have proven to be essential to life as we know it. By mixing ingredients together, it’s possible to create a mixture that takes on some of the properties of its ingredients. In this unit, students take on the role of glue engineers and use engineering design practices to create a glue for use at their school, which serves as the design problem for the unit. They conduct hands-on investigations to observe properties of a variety of possible glue ingredients and learn how certain materials respond to heating and cooling; they engage in digital card sorts to apply their understanding of how properties of ingredients affect properties of mixtures; and they search for useful information about each ingredient in the unit’s reference book. Over the course of the unit, students conduct tests that yield quantifiable results, graph their data, analyze and interpret results, and then use that evidence to iteratively design a series of glue mixtures, each one better than the one before. By the end of the unit, students are able to speak knowledgeably about their choices and argue for how a particular glue mixture best meets their design goals, with evidence from a variety of sources.