7.5 Coding with Scratch 2 - 6 Interactive lessons

Year 7 pupils build a whole game in Scratch, one scene at a time, and learn to code properly along the way. Six interactive lesson pages guide them step by step, so a non-specialist can teach the unit with confidence.

The story: a traveller walks up a forest path. Colin the bat flies down to meet them: “Shall we go and see Big Ed?” Say yes, and it’s the castle, where Big Ed’s three pet dragons rush to greet him (he has to jump), and then his riddle. Get it right and you’re free to roam the forest. Get it wrong, and you’re a frog in the swamp until you’ve eaten ten bugs.

The six lessons:

Setting the Scene: sprite properties, x and y, My Blocks, a repeat loop, variables, join, and checking the answer with OR
The Castle: broadcast and when I receive, pick random, glide, touching, and the space-bar jump
The Riddle: how every scene starts, “For all sprites”, uploading a backdrop, and the fork in the road
The Swamp: arrow keys, falling bugs with repeat until, a score, and the way out
On Your Own: plan, build and test your own adventure, from 11 ideas based on the Scratch Coding Cards
Finish and Share: bug hunt, play a friend’s game, share to your class studio, your unit test, and a certificate

What is in it:

Every step tells the next part of the story first, then shows the exact Scratch blocks, drawn in the real Scratch colours
A drawn Scratch editor that lights up the button or menu pupils need
Predict first, put the blocks in order, and fault find in every lesson
Challenge steps in every lesson to stretch the fastest
Next only unlocks when each step is done
A guide to Scratch Teacher Accounts: you make the pupil accounts and reset forgotten passwords yourself
Teacher Instructions and IT Instructions

Built for real classrooms:

No logins, no installs and no pupil data stored. Pupils build on the free Scratch website, beside the lesson page.
Each lesson is a single HTML file that opens in Chrome. No webcams needed.
SEND is never a barrier: read aloud, the story first, clear pictures of every block, and lifelines.

These lessons are not better than a good teacher. But they are better than no teacher.

More from keyffsmyff: 8.1 Computing Systems (free), 7.4 Google Docs, 7.6 AI: The Lazy Trap, 8.3 Spreadsheets, 8.5 The Pizza Project, and Year 8 Python (19 lessons).

Written by Keith Smith, Head of Computer Science at Chenderit School. Scratch is a project of the Scratch Foundation; these lessons are not made or endorsed by it. If they help you, please leave a review.