Scratch Dance Party

My grade four aged kids Love coding with Scratch Dance Party. Coding & computational thinking is a great way to:

  • Develop problem solving skills as students try to get their dancers to change dance moves with the music they choose
  • help explain the world & make virtual worlds come alive for example with VR tours of museums
  • Have fun with grade curriculum through games such as geometry etc..
  • Practice thinking & writting in more detailed and specific formats and practice problem solving and editing as exampled by the PB & J video.

Computational thinking can help learners become better problem solver’s because they must engage in the four steps of decomposition, pattern recognition, abstraction, and algorithm design. Decomposition involves breaking problems down into easier to manage pieces which is often the first step in creative problem solving. Pattern recognition is about recognizing whether you’ve used strategies in the past to solve problems and then building on those strategies to address current problems. Abstraction is an essential part of computational thinking and problem-solving because it allows you to remove extraneous information and focus exclusively on the details of the problem. It’s sort of a summary of which next steps need to be completed in order to solve the problem so it’s kind of about putting the pieces back together and summarizing the problem results after you have deconstructed to actually engage in the problem-solving practice. These are the same strategies necessary to create an infographic that is a summary of multiple and larger concepts which seems to be an essential skill of the 21st-century. Being able to focus and highlight important information out of textbooks and readings or videos is another important skill that is fostered through computational thinking in the educational setting. Think… CORE COMPETENCIES teacher candidates…Nailed it !

BUT remember… It’s not all dance parties and flappy birds (It’s not all peanut butter and gumballs) (It’s not all sunshine & rainbows)

  • Screentime??
  • internet & computer access
  • kids playing that weird car game during class up in R hand corner of screen
  • more difficult fo r me to see how to relate it directly to First Peoples Principles of Learning
  • Not as conducive to early French Immersion classes as there is an expectation for no English.

I Coded a Flappy Bird Game! Wanna PLAY???

See how fun it can be to code and engage with creating games, videos and presentations using scratch type coding programs.

https://studio.code.org/c/1596844952