Tutor Guide: An Introduction to Scratch (PDST TiE/Lero), Term Time 2015 / 2016
Tutor Materials
● Tutor Presentations (emailed to all tutors) ● Tutor Guide (this document) ● Venue requirements – Tutors should be aware of the venue requirements – available from the Education Centre.
Participant Materials
● Materials are now in soft copy only – there are no hard copy printed materials for this course ● PDF of Participant Manual - Available to download from website http://www.pdst.ie/scratch ● Lesson Plans available at http://scratch.ie/primary/lessonplans.
© PDST Technology in Education/Lero 2015 1 Summary of the Course Running order
Contents Session 1
Introduction to Scratch
Getting Started with Scratch
Sound in Scratch
Discussion Time
Session 2
Drawing in Scratch
Operators in Scratch
Other programming resources
Discussion Time
© PDST Technology in Education/Lero 2015 2 Detailed description of the course Running Order
Session 1
● Introductions. Discuss prior Scratch experiences of participants ● Slides Session 1 Slide 1- 5 o Slide 3 is a video from an Irish classroom which can be accessed from the PDST Technology in Education: Good Practice - Videos page. o Introduce participants to Scratch. Describe Lero’s Scratch in schools project (http://www.scratch.ie/about) and the collaboration between PDST Technology in Education (formerly NCTE) and Lero, resulting in this course.
● Tutor to introduce the basic concepts in Scratch by using the in-built step-by-step guide. It is important that the tutor demonstrates each of the steps in the guide and then give the participant time to complete the steps
● Complete Participant Manual Session 1. This is a practical session. Participants should be encouraged to ask questions and support each other.
● Participants will look at basic movement, adding sprites and backgrounds, costume changes and sound.
As the participants are working through the tasks the tutor should also complete the work. You should talk through activities slowly, indicating which palette each block comes from.
Participants will need to access scratch.ie to complete tasks from the ICS/Lero lesson plans. If the internet connection is unreliable in your venue download the tasks and display them on the IWB. Participants will use some of these lessons throughout the week.
● Demonstrate online registration for a scratch account. If you wish, set up a folder where participants can share projects throughout the week.
o Log into your Scratch account at www.scratch.mit.edu.
o Click on “My Stuff”
o Click on New Studio. Give the studio a relevant title. Tick the box to allow anyone to add projects.
© PDST Technology in Education/Lero 2015 3 o Give participants the URL of your studio. They can then “Follow” the studio and access it from their own profile page throughout the 2 sessions.
● Discussion Time
o Use Slide 6 in the presentation as a starting point for a group discussion
Session 2
● Session 2 Slide 1 - 5
● There is a second video of Scratch from an Irish classroom that should be shown
● Participants must open the participant manual Session 2 on their desktop.
● Drawing
o The manual demonstrates how to draw a square. The activities asks participants to draw squares and other 2D shapes. It is important that the tutor is able to draw other 2D shapes in Scratch.
● Operators
o The second part of this session is a basic introduction to using the Operators palette. The tutor should give an overview of the different blocks available. For the purposes of the task only basic blocks will be used
● Mini Project
o The final part of the session gives participants an opportunity to work in groups to create a small Scratch project. Sufficient time needs to be given to this task, including time for presenting. The tutor should be able to give some suggestions to the group of small projects that they could create.
● EU Code Week
o EU Code week takes place from October 10th - 18th. The tutor needs to show the website for EU Code Week and encourage teachers to register their event, even if they are only doing a lesson in Scratch that week. Slide 6 of the presentation references it.
© PDST Technology in Education/Lero 2015 4 ● Other Programming Resources
o Refer participants to the section of their manual that mentions other programming resources. If time permits the tutor could demonstrate some of the resources.
● More Scratch
o Mention the Scratch.ie competition and the Scratch summer courses that are available (Slide 7).
● Discussion Time
o Use Slide 8 in the presentation as a starting point for a group discussion
© PDST Technology in Education/Lero 2015 5