This introductory course is designed for children aged 7-12 who are beginning to program with Scratch. The course comprises a series of six lessons with the final two lessons devoted to completing a Scratch project to become part of the class showcase. Each lesson should take about an hour, with children working in pairs and exchanging information with each other. Each lesson consists of a ten minute tutorial session that introduces aspects of Scratch programming and can be delivered by watching a video or by teacher demonstration (preferably with a whiteboard).

This lesson plan has been fully revised in September 2009 and is being used to help structure classes in several primary schools in Sussex in the south of England. Originally we devised written notes for teachers and parents but have now moved to providing video lessons for direct communication with the adult or child learning Scratch.

Scratch is designed for 8-12 year olds to learn a particular style of programming suited to creating interactive applications with multimedia content. Scratch is often used informally within a school computer club with pupils encouraged to work in pairs on projects that interest them. In our opinion, a successful lesson plan needs to introduce programming concepts, without overwhelming the pupils, and stimulate their interest so that they have the desire to put their skills to use in creating their own projects.

The lesson plan is designed to run over six sessions held either in the classroom as part of the ICT curriculum or during an after school computing club with two follow on sessions for creating projects to become part of a class showcase.