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Getting Started with Scratch

Scratch is ideal for students that want to learn the principals of programming before they have keyboarding skills. Once they have keyboarding skills we suggest they move on to learning turtle graphics with Python.

Before you begin your mentoring session we recommend you do the following:

  1. Go to the scratch web site:
    http://scratch.mit.edu/
  2. Create your own account for yourself and suggest that each student create their account with the help of their parent or guardian. If they want to come back and continue working on their programs they must have their own account.
  3. Get familiar with the layout and functions of the site. Make sure you know how to go to the lower-left corner of the web page and find the "Add Extensions" to add the "Pen" extension for drawing lines. We use pen drawing commands in most of our exercies.
  4. Get familiar with each of the types of blocks and what tab they are under. You can use the color of the blocks in the examples to find out where the blocks came from.

It is also helpful to know the first four principals of computational thinking we discuss in our Beginning Concepts are of our CoderDojo Mentor Resrouces site.