Using Scratch in the Classroom

Scratch is an amazing tool that you can use with your tamariki. Likely some of your students are already on Scratch. To give you a bit more control over your classroom, Scratch has classroom mode, but you need to set it up ahead of time.

To request a teacher account, you need to visit https://scratch.mit.edu/educators/register and request an account.

NB: It can take up to 24 hours for your teacher account to be confirmed

Once you have been approved, follow these steps to set up your classroom. This is the process of allocating usernames and passwords for all your students.

Even if your tamariki have their own private scratch accounts, we suggest you set this up for use at school. It gives you more control about what they do, and it allows you to set and change their password.

This process does not require parent approval - the private accounts for tamariki requires parent approval if they state their DOB is below 13 years old.

STEP 1: Log into Scratch with your teacher account

STEP 2: Click “My Classes” in the top right corner (see below)

STEP 3: Click “New Class”

STEP 4: Enter class name and description. Your students can see this (and perhaps parents too) so pick something sensible and that makes sense.

STEP 5: A Dashboard will come up. Your classes will sit down the left-hand side under the menu “All classes”. Or on the main screen.

STEP 6: Click on students

Once you click into students this page below will come up.

There are three ways to add multiple students to your class.

Option 1 - Adding students one at a time: This is an option if you have a small class, otherwise check out option 3.

Option 2 - Send students a Sign-up link: [We don’t recommend this option] - This will leave students responsible for creating their own username and password. You will later be able to manually change it from your account. **Make sure they don’t use their real names as these logins will be public**

Option 2 - CSV Upload: [This is the option we recommend] - This option allows you to create and set the passwords to your students' logins.

To create a CSV file, open a program to create spreadsheets - the most popular are Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets or Apple’s Numbers.

If you are not using the above, make sure you can save your file as a “CSV” before you get started (Usually going to the Save As command and looking at the available file types)

Once you click on the “Upload CSV” button, you will be taken to this screen.

As you can see, there is an option to “download example”. If you do that, then your device should automatically open the file in something that can both open, edit and save it as CSV.

We suggest using something unique to your school and classroom to make it easy for the kids to type in. For example, if your class has a name like Tui, and your school is called Pōtiki Primary, you could name all your students pptui01, pptui02 etc and maybe make the password just potiki.

The student accounts are added to the global Scratch system, so it needs to be unique on a world stage.

Now that your students are in a “class”, you can add Studios to give them access to pre-prepared examples of Scratch programmes you’ve already made. It’s also a way for them to share their work back with you.

Go back to My Classes, and click on “Studios” underneath the class you want, then click on New Class Studio

Give your new studio a name and a description. If you are planning on having more than one studio per class, then perhaps match the name of the studio with the project or assignment you are working on. Once you’ve successfully added the studio, you can then add projects to the studio. You will have to have previously created these projects AND shared them to be publicly accessible. Once you have done that, you can click on “Add Projects” inside the Studio

If you want the studio to be collaborative (for example you want the students to be able to submit their work to you via the studio) then tick the box “Allow anyone to add projects”

If you want the studio to be read-only - it is only for you to share projects with your students, then do not tick the box.

Some teachers we have worked with, use one studio to share the work with the class, and create another one for the students to share work back.