March 2022

At the moment, Rang 5, Rang 5/6 and Rang 6, are working on a large complex game in Scratch. Its a retro game that most parents will have played, Space Invaders.

We have some complicated Mata to work out and and lots of Variables to create over the next few weeks.

January (Week 5 and 6)

For our last two session all classes did the same game. We made our own painting game.

We created our “Pot of Paint” as a sprite.

We needed to be able to move our paint brush by moving our mouse. We have moved Sprites before like this using the “go to mouse pointer” block of code.

Now using our Pen commands we can begin to paint.

We had to then write some code so that we can have different colours. We need to do this for every colour (pot of paint) we have.

November 23rd (Week 4)

This week in Rang 3 we learned how to move the sprite using the mouse and for another sprite to move randomly on its own.

We controlled the Shark or fish and then a smaller fish or fish food if you preferred tried to moved by itself. The Shark tried to eat the smaller fish!

As well as the fish/food moving on its own we had to code for what would happen if its was eaten. For this game we simply had it disappear and re appear a few seconds later.

November 23rd (Week 4)

In Rang 4 this week I tried to give them a small piece of code they code duplicate and modify to function slightly differently each time.

This weeks game was “How Fast can you Type?

Firstly we needed to make a TIMER. This is done by creating a variable and that every second adds 1 to the number.

We actually created all our Alphabet on the background instead of as individual sprites. So each Letter was set up as a new costume.

The code is in fact very straightforward and just has to be modified for each letter and key pressed.

Next time they are going to complete the Alphabet and finish the last piece of code for when you get to Z

November 16th (Week 3)

This week Rang 3 were using the Pen Command to draw shapes.

We needed to discuss how we should code the pen to draw a square, what direction did it need to go? How many times did it need to repeat? (4 for a square).

Then we had some fun with more repeats and colours.

Rang 4 finished their guessing game this week. We needed to finish our decision statements, and add our loops to allow for our Guesses.

They then had some fun changing the parameters of the game, changing what the number was between and how many guesses. Some made it really hard to guess!

November 9th (Week 2)

In this block of six weeks, Rang 3 and both Rang 4 are doing some coding using Scratch.

With Scratch, you can program your own interactive stories, games, and animations.

Scratch helps the children to learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively.

This week Rang 3 were Palaeontologists!

They had to first create a path for their Palaeontologists to follow. Along this path, they were to find their Dinosaurs.

For the children to move their character, they had to learn about x and y axis. This isn’t something that they would have encountered yet in their Mata but Scratch is a wonderful interactive coding experience which helps them understand these concepts. I also gave them some tips on how to remember which is which!

They now could use this knowledge to move their character using the arrow keys.

Rang 4 are making a Guessing Game.

As a start, the children wrote some parameters down for their game on paper. This is a great habit to get in to, just a brief outline but it makes you think ahead before you start coding.

Two key coding concepts are Variables and Decision Statements, sounds complicated, but believe it or not the children are able to grasp enough at this stage to understand what they need to do.

A variable had to be created to store the number the computer was “thinking of” and your “guess”

We had to use a decision statement

if …then

to decide what action must be taken. Is it correct, as in = to the number the computer is thinking of, or is it too low, < or too high >.

We will have to add some loops next week so that if we do not guess correctly, we get more guesses.