Scratch

Scratch is an exciting programming environment designed for young people to learn to program cool computer applications that can be easily shared with their friends. Scratch has been created by the lifelong learning group at MIT and is free to download at http://scratch.mit.edu.

These pages provide resources for parents, teachers, and computer club facilitators to structure the learning experience for children as young as seven years old to begin programming in Scratch. We have used videos as a direct method of communication for learning scratch and you are free to download and install this site on your local server if you do not have internet access in the classroom.

We offer you the following resources:

• An overview of Scratch.
• A lesson plan for teaching children Scratch in the home, classroom, or at a computer club.
• A series of videos for children and adults to begin learning Scratch.
• Some projects with notes or videos.
• Advanced lessons for adults and older children learning Scratch.
• Some links to other resources useful for learning and teaching Scratch.

Stamati Crook of Redware Research Limited has developed this lesson plan and videos to help his children and their classmates learn Scratch. These resources are free to use but please take the time to register and email some feedback if you find them useful.

We are particularly interested in finding out how children of different ages respond to each lesson and which projects stimulate their interest. Please send us a testimonial if you use this lesson plan in your classroom or computer club to encourage us to put more effort into improving these resources for you.

These pages were last updated (and the lesson plan revised) in September 2009.