Using Lists with Scratch

My class have previously used lists in scratch to create adventure games where the player selects an appropriate item from his/her inventory to solve certain problems. This was nothing too complex: choosing between a banana, a key, a telescope and a piece of wood when faced with the problem of a locked door. Recently I have been looking at how lists can be used in a cross-curricular way and came up with the following idea in maths.

To start off, the children created a variable called random number. Then they wrote a program to make the variable a randomly selected number between 1 and 100 and for the sprite to say the variable. Next we discussed how we could award points based on the properties of the number. The class generated ideas (primes, squares, factors of x, multiples of x,) and then used probability to decide which number property should have the most/least points..

The next step involved children creating each list (based on the aforementioned number properties) and adding the appropriate numbers to these lists. Once this was done, children wrote an algorithm, then a program that checked the random number variable against each list and awarded the appropriate number of points. Some children took it a step further and added a time limit and high score functions to their program. The scratch file that I used to introduce number property lists to the children is available here. Below are screenshots of a pupil's example.

Beats and Bytes

On June 25th, I had the pleasure of hosting eleven local primary schools for an afternoon of live coding using Sonic Pi.

Before the session had taken place, I had run a cpd session to introduce the teachers to the software and show how the Key Stage 2  computer science concepts can be taught using it. After this session, teachers were armed with the subject knowledge and resources to introduce their children to live coding in preparation for the event.

Beats and Bytes started off with a performance from the school band, The Gigabytes, who performed their composition Samba.

After this, the children, who were in groups of 3 and 4, were given the sheet music to the song the band had just performed and a laptop. Their task was simple: code some of the song and personalise it.

Over the next hour, children changed synths, added effects, created loops, set parameters, debugged - on several occasions a child could be heard telling another that 'every do needs and end' - and had fun. When the time was up, each group plugged their laptop into the speaker system and showcased their composition. The variety of sounds that were produced was fantastic, some of the code I had to look at more than once before understanding what the instructions were.

In my opinion the afternoon was a great success, the visiting teachers departed with complimentary comments and the children were asking when they could come again. One child even said it was the best school trip he had been on. For me, I enjoyed watching the children engage with programming, share ideas and solve problems. Yes kids can code, but more importantly, kids enjoy code!