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Session 1: Telling Jokes

Overview

This is the first meeting of Code Club. We want to have fun getting familiar with programming, Scratch, and with each other. Our goals for this lesson practical, social, and cognitive.

Goals

  1. Start to learn each others names and a little about each other.
  2. Understand computer programs (code) as a set of commands that we write to get computers to run programs.
  3. Understand that computer programs have a sequence of commands or statements (or blocks).
  4. Understand that programs can do 2 things at once, in parallel.
  5. Scratch goals:
    1. Everyone gets an account
    2. Discuss social norms on Scratch
    3. Learn how to run a project
    4. Learn to write simple programs with blocks

Introduction (10 minutes)

Everyone says there name, and tells a joke they know or a book/movie/show they think is funny, and talk about why it’s funny.

Class expectations (15 minutes)

Discussion of what good rules will be and what makes a fun class. We will make a list of guidelines, and then talk about how these guidelines also operate on the Scratch website. We will have an awesome poster for week 2!

For Scratch:

  • reviewing comments
  • copying work and giving attribution
  • how to handle inappropriate comments
  • general online safety

What is a computer program? (15 minutes)

Talk about what a computer program is. Play the robot game where kids give instructions to get one of the teachers to complete a task. First use natural language, then give them a reduced set of words they can use.

First Program: Telling a joke

Here we introduce the kids to their first program. They will write a program with two characters, where one tells a joke to the other. We will show them a few examples from Scratch, and then look inside our program. We will focus on the commands to wait, say, and think.

Intermediate modification: change sprite costumes, change backdrop, add motion to characters.

Advanced modification: think of a way to separate the program from the content, e.g. to make a generic knock-knock telling machine that has a pool of jokes and tells one at random.

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