Scratch for the Curriculum

     Scratch is a fantastic programming language that students can use to harness creativity, problem-solving skills, and critical thinking. There are a ton of ready-made projects for students using scratch here. I've had the pleasure of exploring some of these projects and would like to suggest a few for different subjects/grade levels. I also would like to share with you my experiences with a particular project.


Middle School Social Studies:
Making Interactive Landscapes
With this lesson plan, students create a landscape design on paper and then try to recreate it using scratch. I would adapt this lesson plan to focus on either a specific geographic feature or region or let students choose a geographic feature or region to represent. Students create the landscape and then the avatar is able to stop and view specific items along the way. One idea that the author mentioned in his lesson plan that I thought would be pretty cool was to create the Mississippi River and stops along the way.

Middle School Math:
Scale Factor
With this lesson plan, students create shapes and then increase them by a 'scale factor' or number that increases the area by a certain amount. Students create lines of certain lengths using coordinates which creates shapes. They are challenged to put them on certain areas of the screen (or quadrants in an x,y coordinate plane).

Middle School Science:
Animated Biome Project
With this lesson plan, students create one of the 6 biomes. They add three animal and three plant sprites. Each of the sprites must be interactive or tell something about themselves when clicked on. This lesson plan is very informative and creates a really cool visual representation for students learning about biomes.

Middle School English:
Bud Not Buddy Project
With this lesson plan, students create an illustration based on the theme, characters, plot, and setting of this particular book. While I don't know about this book particularly, it is a great project that fits with whichever book that a particular class is reading. One that I didn't see, but thought about was creating a plot skeleton, as well. The possibilities are endless for scratch when it comes to displaying comprehension and analysis of literature.

Middle School Art:
Click and Tag
With this lesson plan, students create a canvas for users to use to make graffiti. As users access the student's scratch project, they are automatically able to create graffiti art. I would supplement the lesson by allowing students to create and save their creation on their classmate's canvas.

The Lesson That I Completed: