Navigating around Scratch
The whole thing
You’ll see that the screen is split into sections. We’ll talk about each section now, but also rest assured, the sections don’t move! So once you start to get used to Scratch, you will be going to the different places without even thinking about it!
Drawers full of tools!
These wee circles to the very left of the screen are where all the tools live. We sometimes call the circles “drawers”. As in a chest of drawers full of stuff, in this case, our tools.
Each drawer is colour coded.
Incidentally, for those that know how to use Scratch Jr (including the kids that have moved on from the junior classes where they used Scratch Jr) the colours are very similar, so it will be an easy transition.
When you click on one of the circles, the list of blocks changes and shows you the blocks in the drawer you have picked.
The Workspace
The big empty space in the middle is the workspace. This is where you drag your tools from the drawers and click them together. Once they are there, that is when the commands do stuff.
Keep an eye on the top right of the workspace. The slightly see-through image is the thing you are working on right now. So, you can see in our example, it’s the cat sprite (see below for what a sprite is!) which means that the code we are writing in the workspace right now is for the cat character that we have in this programme.
The Stage
The square on the top right is called the stage. This is where the magic happens! Much like a stage in a theatre!
You can click on the four arrows to make the stage full screen, that is useful for testing.
The wee boxes next to the arrows on the very top right of the screen are to help you out if you have a small screen.
Clicking on them will minimise the stage area and give you more workspace, which is handy in a small screen… but you will need to re-grow the stage to see what you’re doing!
Sprites Area (or the green room!)
The bluey-grey section on the bottom right is where all your sprites live. A sprite is the name for the characters in your programme.
Clicking on the cat with the plus sign gives you options for adding more sprites.
The default programme always comes with Sprite1, the cat.
Backdrops Area
What makes a game or programme exciting is what it looks like. A backdrop in Scratch is much like a backdrop in a theatre, or a photography studio. It is the background on which your characters play. The area on the far right is where you see how many backdrops you have, and clicking on the mountains with the plus sign lets you have more than one.