First Programming with Scratch School Computer Curriculum

Overview

This STEAM course is designed specifically for middle or high school students who want to take their first class about computer programming. It’s a great starter programming course to include as part of a computer science curriculum for your students.

This course isn’t about learning Scratch programming specifically. Rather, it is designed to help students get their first experience with computer programming, and along the way, get a basic understanding and familiarity with essential concepts in programming languages, such as algorithms, loops, variables, logic, conditionals, objects, properties, events, design, implementation, debugging, testing, etc.

The projects in this STEAM course are designed to be well–balanced between thinking & logic and artistic expression and creativity, so that both left– and right–brained students can thrive and be motivated!

This is an all project–based lab course. Each week’s class includes a little bit of lecture and slides, but the majority of the time is spent by the students in the lab (or on students’ laptops) on their own to finish each week’s project. The solution to each project is included and the teacher may choose to review it with the students during the next class. The course ends with a capstone project, wherein students will design, implement, test, and debug a State Machine device of their choice (e.g. a soda machine) using Scratch.