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Itch that Scratch!

I spent quite a bit of time this week working with fifth graders using Scratch. I had a great time, and so, it seems, did they. Ms. Arvig's class decided to blog about it in fact. Their comments are overwhelmingly positive. The amazing thing to me is that while they clearly had fun, they also learned some important skills like logical reasoning, problem solving, and creative thinking. As they get better at using Scratch, it can be a tool for math (program your sprite to create a shape or to follow a pattern), language arts (recreate a scene from a story, write your own story), social studies (create a scene from history), art, music, technology, and more. I hope to continue working with classes on this, and I hope teachers will continue to bring their students to the lab to work on projects like this.

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