Craig Evans, Katy Lord, Josh Howe, Amanda Dowling and I created this Scratch activity for children to focus on creating star shapes. This has cross-curricular links with art and maths, as children will need to know how to create a shape and could go further to look at perimeters of shapes.
Our plugged activity…
Children would begin by playing the Scratch below, and decomposing the algorithm by looking at the smaller details to work out which instruction links to which part of the star. Next, children would alter the steps to, in turn, alter the star.
To add differentiation into the session, children could start by just changing the colour of the star, for example. Other children may want to focus on altering the instructions as discussed above, and could even create more than one star on their Scratch.
Extension activity: children could be given an incorrect algorithm on Scratch, and need to use their decomposing, debugging and evaluation skills to correct the algorithm and complete the star. They could even record, on an iPad, how they debugged it and parts they found challenging to work on next time.