Make Create Educate

Year 1 students have been learning about weather and how it changes. So we decided to make an animation of  changing weather with Scratch Jr . This style of animation introduces coding concepts to young students and allows conversation about the teaching content in any key learning area. The group had recently had discussed temperature and different types of clouds. Firstly they named the program Changing Weather. Then they added an outside background of their choice. They then added multiple sprites Sun Cloud Storm Cloud A person without a face Adding a face to a sprite Add a sprite with out a face. Tap on the paintbrush. Tap on the camera. Tap on the face. Position the camera to take a photo of your face. Tap the tick. The photo will be inserted as the face of the sprite.  Creating your own sprite Students were required to create their own sprite for the rain. This required them to learn to use drawing tools, line thickness, line colour. Tap ...

How do you create an animation using ScratchJr.org ScratchJr is a app designed to introduce children to coding. See this post for more information on the resources on the ScratchJr website. ScratchJr can be used to create animations. The video above was made using multiple sprites A sun A cloud (ensure the cloud is hidden) Rain (made by the student) (ensure the rain is hidden) Down Arrow (made by the student) Up Arrow (made by the student) Read this project for information on how to create your own sprite. This project introduces the idea of sending messages between sprites to trigger an action in another sprite. To hide a sprite before coding it, you drag the hide button off the tool bar and tap it. The sprite will disappear. It can be dragged back to the toolbar when finished. The animation starts with the sun. When you press the green flag the sun grows and shrinks then sends an orange message to the cloud. The cloud will not move until it receiv...

Coding is not as complicated as it sounds. If you are introducing coding to a class https://www.scratchjr.org/ is a perfect way to begin. It is designed for young children to 7 years. But it is also suitable for a first platform for primary aged students who have next coded or for use with old special needs children as a differentiation tool. If you are using it with older children it would be expected that you would move onto more complicated programs. For people new to coding there are many resources on the  https://www.scratchjr.org/teach/activities website. The cards  introduce users to the basic functions. The cards can be downloaded and printed for use in the classroom. This would be an introduction to the concepts. It would be expected that one you have completed these you would move onto building your own games. To learn about animation access the lessons through the Teach, Curricula menu and click the Animated Genre link For games to reinforce skills ...