Grade 3-8

Disney Infinity Play Lab (Code.org)

The code.org lessons scaffold students to move characters and have conversations (speech bubbles) to create a story Disney Infinity characters. The hour of code starts with an introductory video and there are teacher resources as well.

Coding Concepts: Sequential, user input/event, loops

Story Telling (Scratch - from Creative Computing)

Animating stories in Scratch engages many students with its low floors, high ceilings and wide walls. with many characters (sprites) to choose from and the ability to create their own, students can create attractive stories - often with interactivity.

Students can use a Story Starter and remix to make their own unique story. Or they can begin with a new file.

Teachers can use the guided inquiry lessons from Creative Coding to scaffold new coding skills. In creating the code, students are building intuitive understandings of mathematical concepts like proportional reasoning, transformations and coordinates

Sample projects:

Conversation

Turtle Island

Coding Concepts: Sequential and concurrent events. Often repetition, nesting, conditionals and control structures.

Procedural writing (Scratch)

Writing about code is a meaningful strategy to engage in procedural writing, again with immediate consequences if steps are missing or in an incorrect order. Any one who has tried to follow directions to assemble something understands the value of clear technical writing.

Instructions:

1. Students play with new code

2. Students write a description what a block does, how to use it and sample uses.

3. Students exchange procedural writing, attempt to follow the directions, asking questions if necessary and pointing out confusions.

Students are engaged in the coding- can see the value of clear technical writing when they exchange information on blocks. Blocks provide immediate context for learning to write clear instructions

Adapted from Jim Pedrech, Holy Cross Catholic District Secondary School, Strathroy Ontario

Sample task

Coding Concepts: Any

Multilingual Story-Telling

Students can change the language of the blocks to support and value home languages. Click on the globe at the the top left to access a long list of languages.

Students can also create bilingual stories to support language learning. Research has shown that creating and integrating bilingual books can build home-school connections, support positive identity development, and of course literacy: https://www.ouinolanguages.com/tips/using-bilingual-books/