Year 5 Programming with Scratch (Teacher notes)
Progression of skills in this pack
1. Program inputs for control, selection (conditions) and sensing for interaction and data variables for scoring and a game timer. (Activity 1)
2. Program distance sensing and movement. (Activity 2)
3. Program Inputs, outputs, loops, selection, sensing and variables. (Activity 3)
4. Program list variables that chooses randomly. (Activity 4)
📝 National Curriculum Content
Design, write and debug programs that accomplish specific goals; solve problems by decomposing them into smaller parts.
Use sequence, selection, and repetition in programs; work with variables and various forms of input and output.
Use logical reasoning to explain how some simple algorithms work and to detect and correct errors in algorithms and programs.
⏱ 5-7 hours
👨🏫 Teacher Input and Prior Learning
The free online Scratch editor is one of the most popular platforms in education to teach programming. The pupil activity packs below consolidate many of the skills covered in Year 4 Scratch Activity Pack into single projects, so you may want to check which activities the pupils have already completed before they start these. If your pupils have completed all of the activity packs from our year 3 and 4 packs then they should have the independence to work through the three packs below, using the video tutorials to build their skills.
🛠 What will pupils and teachers need?
Access to the Scratch website.
The Scratch Pupil Activity Packs (details below).
The VRVex website for activity 2. It is free to use and works on all devices.
The Scratch Tips and Tricks posters plus display below provide excellent prompts for the pupils.
Differentiation
The pupil activities below get progressively more challenging. Each activity page also includes extra challenges for pupils to extend their projects. The Scratch Sentences activity could be used an optional extension.
✅ Assessment
You can also request a Scratch Teacher account here; the teacher account allows you to create pupil logins and then see the projects that the pupils create, helping with assessment. You can create pupil logins for each of your pupils or it may be easier to create one that all pupils share – if so pupils will need to name their project in order to differentiate it from each others.
Pupils will need to share their projects from their login (see image below) to enable teachers to see them on your teacher account.
The video below describes how to create individual or shared pupil logins, change the password, name and share projects and see the projects pupils create.
Use the downloadable assessment grid below to record what each pupil has achieved. Next to each objective we have put the Scratch pupil activity pack that the objective/skill is covered in.
📝 Unplugged Assessment Activities
Below is a downloadable and printable activity sheet/cards that can be used to assess pupil understanding of the vocabulary and application of the skills, either individually or as a group task/extension task. Also includes teacher answer sheet.
📝 Other resources
Below is a downloadable and printable activity sheet/cards that can be used to assess pupil understanding of the vocabulary and application of the skills, either individually or as a group task/extension task. There is also a Top 10 Tips and Tricks video that is worth showing to pupils once they have begun using Scratch.
Pupil Activity 1. Write a program with inputs, movement, selection, sensing and data variables.
Scratch Maze Pupil Activity Pack
Pupil Activity Code: 4TY6 – What is it?
The Scratch Maze Pupil Activity Pack brings together many of the skills that pupils should have covered in the previous activity packs to build a maze game, including keyboard inputs for control, selection and sensing for interaction and game-play, data variables for scoring and a game timer.
Pupil Activity 2. Program distance sensing and movement (Virtual Robot).
Scratch Virtual Robot Maze Pupil Activity Pack
Pupil Activity Code: VWQ2 – What is it?
This activity pack uses Scratch programming skills to help pupils program a virtual robot using the VRVex website. It include tutorials for programming sensing (sensing the wall of the maze) and programming the robot to move around the maze.
Pupil Activity 3. Program Inputs, outputs, loops, selection, sensing and variables.
Scratch Football Pupil Activity Pack
Pupil Activity Code: SFZ4 – What is it?
Pupils can learn to write a program for a football game that includes inputs, outputs, conditions, sensing, random variables and values (scoring).
This does not have to be a football game but could also be Hockey etc.
The extension tasks include making it a 2 player game and also adding a scoring system, skills pupils can use from the Scratch Maze activity.
(Extension) Pupil Activity 4. Program list variables that chooses randomly.
Scratch Sentences Pupil Activity Pack
Pupil Activity Code: SCY7 – What is it?
This activity can be used as an extension task. The data function in Scratch can also be used to create lists which can be used in a random way. For example, below is a program for a random word generator to fit into a sentence. This can be used in many ways but demonstrating this example to the students allows them to take it in many different directions.
The Scratch Sentences Pupil Pack guides pupils through adding different choices for words in a sentence such as names, adjectives to lists in Scratch and then writing a program to randomly generate a sentence.
Another use for the random generator is to randomly create sporting fixtures. Ask the pupils to try to make a fixture list using the skills they have acquired.
🏅Certificates
Pupils who have completed all of the activity packs above could be awarded our Scratch Level 3 Certificate below.