Grades: 3-5
Subject- Writing and Humanities
In this lesson my students animated a narrative story they wrote to demonstrate their understanding of rocks from our How The World Works unit. You could adapt this concept of having students animate a narrative story through coding to just about any grade.
Lesson Outline:
- Background: Students had studied the concepts of what changes the earths surfaces for several weeks. They learned about weathering, erosion, deposition, and plate tectonics.
- Pass out a rock to each student and ask; “What is the story of this rock?”
- Have students imagine that they are a rock and write a story from the perspective of the rock.
- First they need to think about what they know happens to rocks.
- How could it have gotten to where it is? What events could have happened? Can they demonstrate their understanding of unit vocabulary (erosion, weathering etc.)
- Students create a story outline which includes planning what they will need to put this into Scratch. They need to list what sprites and backgrounds they will need.
- Put the story into Scratch.
Animation Help Sheets:
[vimeo 173953466 w=640 h=360]Make a Story from Lifelong Kindergarten
For this lesson I was inspired by Melanie Sylvester and Alfredo Papaseit. Who used Scratch to create narrative games. Check out their resources here.