5th Grade Coding - Scratch Project Homework

Today in 5th grade the students began to work on their first major independent programming challenge.  Each student is choosing their own project and writing code to make it happen.  Some are doing educational games and other games just for fun.  A few are using Scratch to program animation and tell a story.  Some are art creating programs.

Here is a game I am working on coding.  Target Timer is a work in progress and there is a lot more to come as I teach the students about the possibilities of Scratch.

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/27292323/

    Target Timer

The students  have homework for the first time.  They need to make a detailed list of the things they are going to need to figure out in order to reach their project goal.  In other words, what with the program need to do in order to create the game or animation they have planned.

An example from the Target Timer game above would be that I needed to figure out:

• how the program would know if the target had been hit
• how to keep score
• how to know if the new score was better than the last
• how to get the target to change size
• how to get the target to move to a random location

The students need to bring this list next week to class so I have a point at which to begin helping them.  I'll be able to help them prioritize their list and give them something to work on while I am helping other students.