SHARED FACILITIES PARENT CURRICULUM COMMUNICATION
      3rd Quarter 2011

21st Century Problem Solving:

During the third quarter in 21st Century Solutions, 6-8th grade will be focused on making computational creations in Scratch.  Scratch is a programming environment that utilizes snap-together blocks to create programming code.  This quarter students will learn to understand and use the computational concepts of sequence (a series of steps for a task), looping  (running the same sequence multiple times), operators (incorporating mathematical and logical expressions into scripts), parallelism (making things happen at the same time), and events (one thing causing another thing to happen).   Other important skills they will develop are the computational practices of incremental design (developing a little bit, trying it out, then developing some more), and testing and debugging (making sure that things work, and finding and fixing mistakes). 

Our next unit will be a story-telling unit, where students will be taught to use the “broadcast” and “when I receive” blocks, which will emphasizes the concept of events.  Using these blocks students will be able to create a multi-scene story or slideshow, also incorporating written or recorded dialogue.   In collaboration with research done in library class, students will also use Scratch to create a persuasive commercial for an entertainment package they develop.  Finally, 6-8th graders will make their first foray into game making by using Scratch to create variations on a maze game.

5th graders are moving away from PowerPoint for this year, and will next turn to image editing.  Using an online image editor called Sumo Paint, students will learn about layers, selection tools, image size, as well as drawing tools and their various options.  Students will use these tools to create a digital collage.   Each class will also have a design competition to create a desktop background that represents their class. The winning background will be set as the background for all students in the class for the rest of the year!  5th graders will also be introduced to Microsoft Photostory, which they will use to recreate narratives from their Language Arts textbooks in a multimedia format.

All of the software use this quarter is free and available online!  I encourage students to download Scratch (scratch.mit.edu), Photostory (available at download.com), and use SumoPaint (sumopaint.com) and use these applications at home!  Also please visit mrskostecki.org to see samples of student work and learn about the most recent happenings in class.  Feel free to email me with any questions at aakostecki@cps.edu.