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Act 3 Curriculum

ACT 3 of the Elementary for ALL curriculum consists of lessons on introducing coding and computational thinking skills in Scratch, teaching environmental science concepts, and creating community-based projects on environmental issues in Scratch projects.

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Scratch Basics

These six lessons will support the instruction of how to program simple projects in Scratch. For each lesson, a lesson plan, slide deck, student workbook pages and lesson resources are provided.

Lesson 1.1 Setting Up Scratch Accounts 

This lesson walks students through the process of logging into Scratch for the first time and joining the teacher's Scratch class. There is a "Tinkering with Scratch" activity for students to work on as classmates are getting set up. 

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Duration: 50 minutes

Lesson 1.2: Introduction to Scratch

This lesson introduces the Scratch environment to students and teaches them to import sprites (characters) and how to edit them. 

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Duration: 50 minutes

Lesson 1.3: Scratch Charades

Students will play a Scratch version of charades and determine the script that is performed by the actor. They will learn how block-based programming works without the complexity of the Scratch platform.

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Duration: 50 minutes

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Lesson 1.4: Coding Concepts 1 - Sequence, Algorithm, Program

Students will review the concepts of sequence, algorithm, and program to give them language to talk about the process of creating projects. Students will debug code to better understand the importance of initialization. They will work on a project called "Making Things Move and Talk".

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Duration: 50 minutes

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Lesson 1.5: Coding Concepts 2 - Events, Loops, Animation

This lesson introduces the concepts of events, loops, and animation. They will debug code to discover the importance of "wait" blocks in animation. Students will make a flip book to help students development their conception of animation. 

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Duration: 50 minutes

Lesson 1.6: Broadcasting and Receiving

This lesson introduces students to the concept of broadcasting and receiving. This is an important concept that enables sprites (characters) to interact.

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Duration: 50 minutes

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Unit 2 Environmental Literacy

These lessons teach students that a system is two or more parts that interact to form a whole. Students learn about how trees affect people and how people affect trees. The concept of cause and effect is taught explicitly. For the Scratch project, students narrate the relationships and animate sprites in a tree connection circle. Students also  

Lesson 2.1: What is a system? 

Students will define what a system is and will recognize what is and isn't a system.

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Lesson 2.2 All Parts Work Together

Students will identify parts and the relationships between the parts  in a chaparral ecosystem. 

Lesson 2.3: Distruptions in an Ecosystem

Students will 

  1. Explain how invasive species enter an ecosystem

  2. Explain how the invasive black mustard plant has affected the chaparrel ecosystem

  3. Share what people are doing to rescue ecosystems from invasive species

  4. Identify and report on an invasive species in their local community

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Lesson 2.4: Demonstrating Interactions in Scratch

Students will explore the concept of parallelism. They will codbroadcast blocks and they will incorporate loops into their projects.

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Lesson 2.5: Modeling an Ecosystem in Scratch

Students will build a model of an ecosystem in Scratch.

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Lesson 2.6: Reflect and Share

Students will share their reflections on their project and its process. They will listen and learn from the projects of their classmates. They will give specific feedback to their classmates. 

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