Year 1

Programming animations

This unit introduces students to on-screen programming through ScratchJr. They will explore the way a project looks by investigating sprites and backgrounds. Students will use programming blocks to use, modify, and create programs. They will be introduced to the early stages of program design through the introduction of algorithms.

Lesson 1: Comparing tools

Learning objectives

To choose a command for a given purpose

● I can find the commands to move a sprite

● I can use commands to move a sprite

● I can compare different programming tools

During this lesson Crow Class became accustomed to the ScratchJr programming environment. They discovered that they can move characters on-screen using commands, and compared ScratchJr to the Bee-Bots used in the previous unit.

Gabriel and Hamza, explored the programming blocks. They understood that the programming blocks are used to tell the computer what you want it to do, just as the buttons are used to give instructions to a Bee-Bot.

Subhan and Zael identified the area where they can drag the blocks of code. They chose a blue block and dragged it into the programming area, and tapped it to make the cat move.

Theu learned that in ScratchJr the cat is called a sprite and that sprites are objects that can be programmed to do different things.

Mahad and Leila were asked if they could move their sprite to the left. Thye had time to have a look at the different movement blocks and try to make the cat move left.

"We dragged the Move left block down into the programming area and tapped on it to make the cat go left."

Rafe and Nelia could make the sprite move up. They could describe how they did this.

The children found it to be a lot of fun and confidently tackled each new challenge.

They made their sprite move down using the Move down block. Ian and Kamal described what they were doing.

They were shown a number of animations. After they had watched the animations they had to guess which Move block was used, and show the corresponding number on their fingers.

AI Awareness Day

Year 1 learned attended an online AI assembly with Katie and Tex. As a class, the students discussed, where we use AI in our daily lives, how Gen AI is used and how to make sure we use it responsibly.

Lesson 2: Joining blocks

Learning objectives

To show that a series of commands can be joined together

● I can use more than one block by joining them together

● I can use a Start block in a program

● I can run my program

During this lesson the students discovered that blocks can be joined together in ScratchJr. They used a Start block to run their programs. They also learned additional skills such as adding backgrounds and deleting sprites. They follow given algorithms to create simple programs.

During this lesson Crow Class discovered that blocks can be joined together in ScratchJr. They used a Start block to run their programs. They also learned additional skills such as adding backgrounds and deleting sprites. Then they followed given algorithms to create simple programs.

Here is a link to ScratchJr so that you can try at home: https://codejr.org/scratchjr/index.html

Lesson 3: Make a change

Learning objectives

To identify the effect of changing a value

● I can find blocks that have numbers

● I can change the value

● I can say what happens when I change a value

During this lesson Crow class discovered that some blocks in ScratchJr have numbers underneath them. They learnt how to change these values and identify the effect on a block of changing a value.

Lesson 4: Adding sprites

Learning objectives

To explain that each sprite has its own instructions

● I can show that a project can include more than one sprite

● I can delete a sprite

● I can add blocks to each of my sprites

During this lesson Crow Class were taught how to add and delete sprites in ScratchJr. They used the algorithms to create programs for each of the sprites and took care to add them to the correct sprite.

Chikwado and Hayaa

The children learned that each sprite had its own programming area.

Chance and Aisha

They learned how to add programming blocks to give instructions to each of the sprites.

Hamza and Ian

Crow class enjoyed exploring the different sprites and changing them around.

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