As a way to build on these beginning programming skills and to help make their experience more authentic, the students used Scratch to design games, simulations, and interactive animations to teach Spanish vocabulary to their kindergarten peers. The kindergarten students will be viewing the projects in Spanish with Ms. Diaz-Leroy in the next few weeks. This was the first time I tried such an ambitious project with the third graders. They amazed me yet again.
As with many of the technology projects that take place in my lab with the older students, I asked them to take some time to reflect about their experiences. Taking time to think about one's work, the good and the bad and it how impacts you as a learner, is very powerful. I will be posting all the final projects in the next week to share but thought I'd share one project and reflection with you to help you understand the process the students undertook to complete their projects.
"In computer lab, I learned a program called Scratch. Scratch is a program that teaches children about the things that you program it to do and say. For example you could put a character to say a word that you wanted them to learn. My project was a snowman. There were also clothes to one side. You had to drag the clothes to the snowman to hear their name in Spanish. What I found easy about my Scratch project was making and finding the clothing and snowman. What I found difficult about the Scratch project was programming. I learned Spanish words that I did not know before from my Scratch project." - Brenna
Here is a screen shot of the Scratch platform.
