Telling a Story with Scratch: Part I

Sean and I are working with the students on a new Scratch project in which we are pairing students with approximately the same reading level, and assigning them the following tasks:

1. read a story together
2. create a story board from the story
3. create a dialog from the story
4. use the story board and dialog to animate the story in Scratch

The programming goals for this project include:

1. sequencing program instructions
2. event handling ("when green flag clicked", "when I receive [message]")
3. setting initial state of values changed by the program
4. changing state of object values (location, size, color)
5. message passing to control program flow

New vocabulary students will need to use Scratch:

•  motion
•  looks
• control
• set x to
• change x by
• costume
• switch to costume ...
• show
• hide
• wait __ seconds
• when green flag clicked
• broadcast [message]
• when I receive [message]
• scripts
• sprite

The following mathematical concepts are implicitly involved in all Scratch programs:

• positive and negative numbers
• location in a Cartesian coordinate system
• adding positive and negative numbers
• estimating distances in a coordinate plane

In years past I've taken a much more structured approach when using Scratch with students.   This year we are letting the English language learning goals drive the process, and using Scratch as a supporting technology, albeit one with a wealth of learning in itself. 

What is "the web"?

It is a great time to both look back on how far we have come this year, as well as look ahead to where we want to be in June.  Most of the students in our first year ELL class (which in Arlington Public Schools we call HILT-A) did not know how to keyboard when we started the school year in September.  I decided that since keyboarding is still such an essential part of the human-computer interface, we should start with that.  We spent about a month and a half on basic keyboarding.

Since then, we have worked on:

• setting up gmail accounts and using email
• using the Google Docs word processor to write English assignments
• creating an one-line illustrated dictionary
• introducing programming with Scratch
• integrating mathematics skills and enhancing programming using TurtleArt

Most students in the class have the skills they need now to begin creating and maintaining their digital portfolios.  The challenge now is to clearly communicate the following terms / concepts:

• web page
• web browser
• web address (URL)
• link
• publish to the web
• web site

Creating digital portfolios, which are in effect, web sites, and linking from the home page to all the artifacts that each student creates will give them the opportunity to learn these concepts in a hands-on way.

Our Dictionary

Beginning in September 2011, our cohort began to build an online collaborative illustrated dictionary for thirteen level one English language learners.  The dictionary serves a basic need of our students: they need a way to learn and retain new words.  In addition, the online dictionary is an ideal avenue for interdisciplinary collaboration among the teachers.  We assign words from six different subjects and also include words that students come across in their daily lives or in their independent reading.

Each dictionary entry consists of a vocabulary word, its part of a speech, a short definition, synonyms, an example sentence from the student’s own life, a visual, and a caption.  Students use online dictionaries, paper dictionaries, and textbooks to write definitions.  They also write original sentences based on their own experience.  In my language arts class, students then present their words to their classmates.  They know they will need to understand and defend their choices to their peers and teachers.

The beauty of the collaborative online dictionary is that it allows students and teachers to accomplish so many things while working on an authentic and useful learning tool.  For the students, they not only learn essential new vocabulary by creating entries, they also use their work as a daily resource.  Because the dictionary is cloud-based, once an entry is created, it is immediately accessible to all teachers and students with any device connected to the internet.

We continue to add words every day. I haven't counted, but the dictionary must be over 400 entries by now!