This week, my students will put on their programming hats and have a little fun coding in Scratch. They will be selecting a character from a story we have read, such as Les lunettes de Lucette and Alain et Denis font du camping, and completing the Characterization mini unit in CS First. (Unfortunately, this mini unit is currently only available in English and Spanish but we will eventually move on to the longer Storytelling unit which is disponible en français! At the very least, students can change the language in Scratch to French.) The task will be slightly different from that which is outlined in the CS First unit but the concepts demonstrated in the videos and add-ons will be quite useful. The task involves picking a character from the story and finding a sprite that resembles the character. I will show them how to edit the sprite to look a little more like the actual character, such as changing the hair colour, for example. Students will then add speech bubbles, thought bubbles and movement, as well as audio recordings to accompany the speech bubbles. Here is an example I quickly threw together, featuring Pierrette le chat from Les lunettes de Lucette:
Following this activity, students will begin to work on the Storytelling unit to code their own story or chapter about what happens next in the book they have read.
If you have tried either of these units with your students, I would love to hear how it went. Comment below with any insights and tips, s’il vous plaît et merci! 😃
