2nd Grade Scratch Jr Stories

A few weeks ago, our 2nd grade classes came to the Lab for a 60 minute mini-lesson on using Scratch Jr. We went over the basics and then had the students create a few screens with interaction, communication, movement and sound.

After the initial lesson, their teachers incorporated Scratch Jr into their language arts program. After learning about parts of a story and different story elements, the students were challenged to take one of their writing pieces and put it on Scratch Jr as a 4 part (beginning, middle, middle, end) project.

Once their story was "programmed" they were shared with fellow students who peer critiqued them on certain elements like; did the story make sense; did the graphics go along with the story; did the project flow (both as a story and a visual/interactive project)?

Following the feedback, students went back into the program and began to make changes to "fix" the story. This process will go on a couple of times until the students feel their story is the best it can be.