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Developing fundamental programming skills in Scratch

*If your students have prior experience with Scratch, this lesson may not be necessary. For younger students, you may want to start with an activity like the Hour of Code from code.org, which introduces them to drag-and-drop programming.

Key Outcomes:

• Use Scratch to learn fundamental programming skills that will be used later when working with the Arduino platform

  • Using a button as an input device

  • Establishing setup commands that reset conditions when the program restarts

  • Using a delay/wait command to manipulate the timing of events

  • Setting up a loop to efficiently program a repeated set of actions

  • Creating a variable to represent a number, so that its value can easily be changed without rewriting several lines of code

  • Creating a variable to keep "score" during an event, so that decisions can be based on its value

  • Using "if..." and "if... else..." statements to allow an algorithm to "think," producing different outputs depending on the conditions that the program receives from its sensors

Assessment:

Check on students' basic programming skills with this Programming Challenges Review and Answer Key.