OVERVIEW

Activity Overview:

This lesson allows students to retell the major aspects of a children’s book using Scratch Jr. Using their background knowledge of story elements and sequencing, students will use programming on Scratch Jr to tell the story all over again! Students will retell the story by programming characters and their movements, choosing backgrounds, and using the record option.

Meta description

• Subject Area: Computer Science, Reading/Language Arts
• Grade Level : K-2
• Computer Science Domains:
  • Algorithms and Programming
• Computer Science Principles:
  • Creating Computational Artifacts, Testing and Refining Computational Artifacts, Communicating About Computing
• Materials:
  • Scratch Jr application on iPads and Chromebook
• Considerations:
  • It is important that you have explained the basics of Scratch Jr to your students before doing this lesson. A day before the lesson, use your document camera to show the different features and give your students lots of time to play around on their own and feel comfortable.

Lesson Plan

Overview

This lesson allows students to retell the major aspects of a children’s book using Scratch Jr. Using their background knowledge of story elements and sequencing, students will use programming on Scratch Jr to tell the story all over again! Students will retell the story by programming characters and their movements, choosing backgrounds, and using the record option.

ASSESSMENT PRE/POST-TEST

How can we retell a story by using story elements? What are story elements?

OBJECTIVES

1. The student will demonstrate an understanding of the story elements in The Three Little Super Pigs by identifying the characters, setting, problem and solution.
2. The student will demonstrate an understanding of programming by using step by step instructions to show the beginning, middle, and end of the story.

CATCH/HOOK

Have students shut their eyes and think about a book that they have read. Then, have students picture their book as a cartoon that they would see on TV. What does it look like?

ACTIVITY INSTRUCTIONS

1. Have students shut their eyes and think about a book that they have read. Then, have students picture their book as a cartoon that they would see on TV. What does it look like? After days of learning about story elements and retelling, the teacher will explain to the students that they will be retelling a story on their own using an app that they were introduced to yesterday, Scratch Jr. (3 minutes).

2. The teacher will read The Three Little Super Pigs to the students. The students/teacher will have a brief discussion on what took place throughout the story (10 minutes).

3. Once the students go back to their desks, the teacher will pass out a paper and pencil story board to the students to draw out their scratch Jr ideas. The board has three boxes for beginning, middle, and end. This is also important because scratch Jr only allows you to have four frames in one project. (15 minutes)

4. Now that the students have finished their drafts, the teacher will pass out the iPads and Chromebooks. The students will take what learned yesterday to retell the story. They students will need to add backgrounds, characters similar to those in the story, at least 3 character movements, and at least 3 recordings. (45 minutes)

5. When all students have completed the task, the students will share their creations on the document camera with their classmates. (10 minutes)

Supplements

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REVIEW

The wrap up for this lesson is sharing time, which works well in Kindergarten. When students are able to see what their classmates came up with, you are expanding their knowledge and reinforcing the concepts.

STANDARDS